Although he hid it fairly well, George was basically unhappy. He was feeling unfulfilled; his life had become dull and boring; he hated his job; he was probably going to be fired soon because of the economic recession; his relationship with his wife had gone south; he couldn’t communicate any more with his kids; he had no real life except working, eating, watching TV, and sleeping; he could count his real friends on one finger; and he saw no real way of changing anything, of making anything better.

But that wasn’t George’s biggest problem at the moment. His most pressing concern was that he had begun to walk in his sleep.

One night while George was out sleepwalking, he fell into a very deep hole. When he woke up, he discovered he was lying on the bottom in just his pajamas, and there was nothing in the hole except him. He looked up and saw the morning sky above him, with a few bare branches of trees overhanging the perfect circle of sunlight at the top. It was early spring, and there was a chill in the air. He saw no one, but he could hear the faint sound of voices.

He knew he had to try to get out; but the walls of the hole were straight and slippery and high, and there was nothing to use for climbing. Each time he tried, he fell back to the bottom, frustrated. He started crying out for help.

Suddenly, there was a man’s face peering down at him from the top of the hole.

“What’s your problem?” the man asked.

“Oh, thank God,” George cried. “I’m stuck down here and can’t get out!”

“Well, then, let me help,” the man said. “What’s your name?”

“George.”

“Last name?”

“Zimmermann.”

“One ‘n’ or two?”

“Two.”

“I’ll be right back.”

When the face disappeared, George wondered what was so important about the spelling of his name; and then the man was back.

“This is your lucky day, George! I’m a billionaire, and I’m feeling generous this morning.”

The man let go of a small piece of paper he was holding in his hand and it floated slowly down into the hole. George caught it and looked up again. The man was gone.

George stared at the piece of paper. It was a check for a thousand dollars, made out in his name.

“What the hell? Where am I going to spend this down here?” he thought to himself. He folded it and put it in his pajama pocket.

Then he heard another voice coming.

“Please help me,” George yelled to the empty space at the top.

A second man’s face appeared, a kind and compassionate face.

“What can I do for you, my son?”

George could see the man’s clerical collar as he leaned over the edge.

“Father, help me get out of this hole… please.”

“My son….” The voice was soft and loving. “I must perform mass at the church in five minutes, so I can’t stop now. But we will say a special prayer for you today.” Then he reached into his pocket. “Here, this will help,” and he dropped a book into the hole before leaving.

George picked up the Bible, studied it and tried to imagine any possible way to use it to get out of the hole. Eventually he gave up and tossed it aside.

The next passerby was a woman. When she understood George’s predicament, she threw down some organic vegetables, along with vitamins and herbal supplements.

“Eat only these,” she said.

George put them in a pile on top of the Bible.

A doctor stopped and donated a few bottles of the sample medications he was being paid to peddle that week.

A lawyer came by and talked for a while about suing the city for not putting a fence around the hole. He left his card.

A politician promised to pass a law to protect sleepwalkers if George would vote for him in the election tomorrow, assuming he could get out of the hole.

By this time George had taken a seat on the bottom of the hole, shivering slightly from the chill, starting to give up hope that anyone would help him get out. He felt lonely, helpless, and a little fearful. He moved the drugs aside, picked up an organic banana off the pile and took a bite.

“I can help you get out.”

He heard a strong, convincing, powerful female voice. He wasn’t quite sure…. Did he recognize that voice? Had he seen her on TV or something?

“You just need to let go of all your negative thinking, learn to visualize, and then use the ‘Law of Attraction’.”

“But that’s exactly what I’m doing – trying to attract someone to help to get out of this hole!” George protested.

“You must not be doing it right,” came the response.

She tossed something thin and square that landed at George’s feet.

George yelled up to her, “But… wait!” There was no one there to answer.

He picked up the DVD, still shrink-wrapped, and stared at the cover. The Teachings of Abraham Master Course DVD Program.

“At least you could have thrown down a portable DVD player,” he said quietly, to no one in particular.

In a little while a ZEN Buddhist sat down in a lotus position at the edge of the hole, wanting to teach George to meditate. “If nothing else,” the Master said, “if you practice long enough, you’ll feel better about being in the hole. Who knows, you might even be able to levitate your way out in a few lifetimes.”

George was about to resign himself to being in this hole forever when he heard the voice.

“Can you move over a few feet, out of the way?”

George looked up. “What?”

“Could you please move away from the center of the hole?”

George stood up and took a few steps back toward the side. “Why?” he was about to ask, when the man jumped into the hole, landing at George’s feet.

“Are you crazy?” George exclaimed as the man got up and brushed himself off. “Now we’re both in this hole together. Couldn’t you just throw me a rope or a ladder or something?”

The man looked at him gently. “They don’t work.”

“How do you know?” George asked incredulously.

“I’ve been here before, and I know the way out.”

* * *

I assume you’re asking for help, or you wouldn’t be reading this book. Something’s not right in your life and you want to change it.

So I’m about to jump into your hole, but not because I feel any desire or obligation to help anyone. Helping someone else is one of the biggest traps anyone can get caught in.

I also have no intention of becoming a teacher – yours or anyone else’s – or a guru, or a mentor, or a coach, or someone who pretends to have any or all of the answers.

If you want, you can think of me as a “scout” – like a scout on a wagon train in the Old West, whose job it was to ride ahead looking for a way over the Rocky Mountains to reach the Pacific Ocean, finding a path for others to follow with relative safety and security against the elements and the Indians.

I’m not the only scout out there, and I don’t claim to have reached the ocean yet. But I’m the only one who has taken this particular route, which turned out to be a very effective way to go and safe enough for me to return to talk about it.

On my journey, I explored some very radical territory and collected a lot of information about which paths work and don’t work that might benefit someone else. That’s the main reason I’m writing this book, to pass on that information, knowing there are others – not that many, but some – who want to go where I’m going and where I’ve been. Maybe you’re one of them.

You hired me to be your scout (whether you’re conscious of it or not), but you should know that it doesn’t matter to me what you think about this information, or what you do with it. You can take it or leave it. My only job – and my total joy – is to report back to you what I’ve found.

So I’m jumping into your hole because it seems like fun and in alignment with what the universe has in store for me at the moment.

However, maybe you don’t want me in your hole. You should really think about this. If you keep reading, there will come a point where there’s no turning back. In a way, switching metaphors, it will be like climbing Mt. Everest. The journey can be very difficult, physically and emotionally; and it takes a while.

As I said, I’m not yet at the summit, but it’s in sight. I’ve reached a point high enough along the way that the appreciation, the joy, the peace, the serenity of being are already beyond expectation. What I know with certainty – and confirmed for the most part by eye-witness reports from other scouts – is that arriving at the peak is definitely worth the effort of getting there.

You may or may not want to go all the way. I will let you know when we reach the place where you can only go on and not back.

On the other hand, you may decide you don’t want to leave your hole at all. If so, you should stop reading now. There is nothing “wrong” with your staying there. You’ll have enough money and good organic food and books to read and DVDs to watch and drugs to take to keep you occupied and entertained.

It’s your choice.

PART ONE:

THE MOVIE THEATER

METAPHOR

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This is the only radical thinking that you need to do.

But it is so radical, it is so difficult,

because our tendency is that the world is already “out there,”

independent of my experience.

- Dr. Amit Goswami

PREFACE TO PART ONE

There are three things you should know before we begin our journey across the Rocky Mountains….

ONE: Although this book carries a copyright, you are hereby granted permission to print it, copy it, share it, give it away to anyone else, quote it, do anything you want with it – except you cannot sell any part or the whole book, or make money from it in any way, or assist anyone else in making money from it in any way. I feel very strongly that the information in this book should always be available for free to anyone who wants to read it.

TWO: It seems many scouts encounter things that are hard to explain when they return to the group. It’s not easy trying to get people to understand something they have never directly experienced.

So from time to time I will use quotations from other sources. These quotes are not there to prove I am “right” just because someone else whose name you might recognize said the same thing. They are included mainly to try to further explain a concept which can be difficult to grasp and offer another viewpoint using words different than mine which you may relate to more easily.

With very few exceptions, all the quotes and many other references have footnotes to give you the opportunity to check out my sources for yourself. Simply click on the purple footnote number and that will take you to the footnote which will contain an active Internet link. If you want, you can then click on the Internet link to go directly to the source material in your Internet browser. Then click on the word “reading” in the footnote to return to the point you were reading in the text and continue. Try it here by clicking on the number₁

There are also links embedded in the text to various videos to watch as you read. As usual, click on the purple hyperlink.I have also included some Hollywood movie suggestions at the end of a few chapters from time to time. These movies are not supposed to be viewed as perfect examples of the information you just read, but close enough to the subject matter to be interesting and pertinent as well as entertaining.

THREE: People apparently learn most easily when they can compare something new to something they already understand, called by some a “datum of comparable magnitude.”₂

For example, if I were to try to tell you about a new game I saw while I was out scouting called “Blat-Blop,” and suggest you might enjoy playing it, you’d most likely have many questions before being willing to engage and ask for further explanation.

But Blat-Blop cannot be explained directly. It’s different than anything other game known to man. So what do I do?

I tell you that Blat-Blop is like American football, except there’s no ball and no goal posts.

Now, at least, you have some idea of what I’m talking about, as crazy and incomprehensible as it sounds. Your mind probably pictures a bunch of men running around a field all dressed up in heavy pads and helmets, which is true; but you still have no idea what they’re doing or why.

When I said “Blat-Blop is like American football,” I was using a simile, comparing two different things to create a new meaning.

There’s something else called a metaphor. A metaphor is a figure of speech using one thing to mean another and makes a comparison between the two. For example, Shakespeare's line, "All the world's a stage," is a metaphor comparing the whole world to a theater stage. A metaphor is a lot like a simile, but without the direct comparative wording. We could turn Shakespeare’s metaphor into a simile by adding the word “like”: All the world is like a stage.

On the other hand, an analogy shows similarity between things that might seem different – much like an extended metaphor or simile. But analogy isn't just a form of speech. It can also be a logical argument: if two things are alike in some ways, they are alike in some other ways as well. Analogy is often used to help provide insight by comparing an unknown subject to one that is more familiar.

Then there is something called an allegory, which is a one-to-one comparison or substitution of something figurative for something literal. While this is very similar to a metaphor, allegories are usually more subtle and a lot more involved, taking up entire books and pieces of art.

I say all of this for two reasons.

First, I’m forced to use a lot of similes, metaphors, and analogies in this book – and begin the book with an allegory – to try to explain what I’ve seen as a scout that is difficult at times to describe, and very new in many cases. I wish there were words and ways to say exactly what I’ve found without having to make these comparisons, but there aren’t. It’s that simple.

Secondly, I apparently have a small brain malfunction. (Maybe it’s the mad cow.) Despite all previous efforts and diligent study, and the definitions and differentiation I wrote above between metaphor and analogy, I still can’t tell the difference. So I warn you right now – and any English teachers who may be reading – that I might confuse those two words. If you wish, any such error can simply be chalked up to my personal weakness in this area.

Just be prepared for a lot of metaphors and analogies, whichever they may be.

Like…

FOOTNOTES

1. Now click on the word “reading” in – Back to reading

2. Datum of Comparable Magnitude, or Datum of Comparable Magnitude – Back to reading

CHAPTER 1

PLATO’S CAVE

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Imagine that for your entire life you have been sitting in a chair in a movie theater. The place is dark, like all movie theaters; but you can feel…

No… wait! Before we go there…

There’s a famous allegory called “Plato’s Cave,” written of course by Plato. It’s a fictional conversation between Plato’s teacher, Socrates, and Plato’s brother, Glaucon; and, essentially, the first part of the allegory goes like this…

Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a cave inhabited by prisoners who have been chained and held immobile since childhood. Not only are their arms and legs held in place, but their heads are also fixed so all they can see is a wall directly in front of them. Behind the prisoners is a large fire, and between the fire and the backs of the prisoners is a raised walkway.

As people and animals travel over the walkway between the fire and the backs of the prisoners, the light from the fire casts their shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners. The prisoners can only see the shadows, but they don’t know they are shadows.

There are also echoes off the wall from the noises produced on the walkway. The prisoners can only hear the echoes, but they don’t know they are echoes.

Socrates asks Glaucon if it is not reasonable that the prisoners would think the shadows were real things, and the echoes were real sounds, not just reflections of reality, since they are all the prisoners had ever seen or heard.

Socrates next introduces something new into this scenario. Suppose, Socrates surmises, a prisoner is freed and permitted to stand up and move around. If someone were to show him the actual things that had cast the shadows and caused the echoes – the fire, and the people and animals on the walkway – he would not know what they were and not recognize them as the cause of the shadows and sound; he would still believe the shadows on the wall to be more real than what he sees.₁

The allegory goes on, but I want to stop here. (If you are interested, you can watch a three-minute animated video at PlatosAllegory.com).

Now…

Imagine that for your entire life you have been sitting in a chair in a movie theater. The place is dark, like all movie theaters; but you can feel there are restraints – shackles – over your wrists and ankles, making it difficult to move your arms or legs. The back of your chair is high, rising above your head so it is impossible to look behind you. All you can see is the movie screen in front of you and the people sitting next to you in the same condition.

In front of you, sweeping around on all sides of the theater as far as you can see, is a gigantic IMAX 3D screen. You sit there watching movie after movie, and it seems as if you’re part of the movie itself, fully immersed in it. (Click here for Woody Allen’s example of a total immersion movie, from The Purple Rose of Cairo.)

Like the shadows and echoes in Plato’s Cave, these movies are all you have ever known. They are, in fact, your only reality, your life.

The actors are good and the scripts well-written, and you get emotionally involved in these movies, feeling anger, pain, sadness, regret, joy, enthusiasm, antagonism, fear, and a wide range of other emotions depending on the storyline. You have your favorite characters – family members and friends, for example – who show up often, and others you despise and wish would not appear at all.

Some movies are pleasurable to watch, even beautiful at times – happy, poignant, satisfying, enjoyable. Others are dark and ominous, disturbing, painful, producing reactions inside you which aren’t very comfortable. You resist watching those and wish you didn’t feel what you were feeling. You close your eyes at times, wanting the script to change.

But you’re content to stay there and watch, because you’ve been told – and have come to believe from experience – this is the only reality there is, and you have to accept it.

The vast majority of people – 95% of the Earth’s population, if I had to guess, maybe more – will die sitting in that movie chair.

For the others, something interesting will happen one day.

In a particularly uncomfortable movie, you might scream “No!” and forcefully twist your body in the chair. Suddenly you’re aware that you no longer feel the shackles on your wrists and ankles, and you realize you can now move your arms and legs. You use your hands to feel around and discover the shackles had no locks on them – ever – and your panicked movements simply pried them open. All along you had just assumed – believed – you were a prisoner, like a dog who stays clear of an invisible fence.

You wonder what to do next. You realize you no longer have to sit there and watch the movies if you don’t want to. You could get up; but you don’t, not right away. You might lean over to the person next to you and start telling them there are no locks on the shackles, but all you get is a “Sshhhh” in response.

The fear of standing up is enormous; the thought of walking away goes against everything you have been taught. Finally – maybe it’s curiosity, maybe it’s anger, maybe it’s just that you can no longer stand to feel what you’re feeling – you decide “to hell with the fear.” You get up. Nothing happens. No sirens go off, no one comes to make you sit down again, and you begin to think maybe there was nothing to be afraid of.

So you decide to walk. As you move down the row toward the aisle, saying “Excuse me, excuse me,” people look at you in astonishment and wonder and dismay. Some even tell you to sit back down, get out of the way, behave. It’s clear they all think you’re crazy. But there’s something inside of you that feels excited despite the fear and urges you on.

Finally you make it to the aisle, turn and see that it leads up between the seats; but you can’t yet see the rear of the theater. What is clearer now is that the movie screen continues all the way around the building, 360 degrees; and hanging down from the ceiling in the middle of the theater is a large black ball. Out of the ball very bright light is streaming toward the screen on all sides. You have no idea what it is, or what it means.

As you walk up the aisle, you bump into a couple other people going in your direction, and some others returning to their seats. The ones heading back to their seats give you a dirty look, almost hateful, mainly terrified, and someone warns you not to go any further. But you’ve gone this far, you think, and decide you want to find out what’s at the end of the aisle.

When you finally make it to the back, you can see the entire design of the circular theater. In one half are the seats from where you came, all facing in one direction, filled with people staring straight ahead at the movie screens; and behind the seats is a large space where people like you are walking around. You also see a door in the middle of the far wall with a sign saying, “Do Not Enter – Extremely dangerous.”

Since the IMAX 3D screen continues all the way around the structure, there’s no way to escape the movies that are playing. In other words, your reality, your life follows you everywhere. But something’s different, even if you can’t say what at the moment. The movies haven’t changed, but you have, in some way you can feel but don’t yet understand.

There seem to be little groups of people gathering here and there – others like you who had gotten out of their chairs and made it to the back – discussing something that sounds important. It’s all so new, so strange, so difficult to understand, so frightening, so… “unreal.” You think for a minute about going back to your seat, back to the reality you know so well. Then you decide not to, to stay a little longer, at least for now.

You stop for a moment at the back of one group and ask, “What’s going on?”

“We’re trying to change things,” is the answer.

“What do you mean?” you ask.

“We don’t like the movies that are playing. We want different ones,” the voice clarifies.

As a Human Child, you had never considered the idea of changing the movies. You didn’t know it was possible. But now it’s an interesting thought, and you admit there were movies you wish you hadn’t had to be part of, aspects of your life you would have preferred not to watch and experience.

You eavesdrop on another group in time to hear a man say, “Yes, this is reality. But there’s a better place we will all go to when we die, if you just have faith and follow a few simple rules….”

There’s a Guru in the next group admonishing his followers, “Yes, we can leave this reality, but we must all go together. Have compassion for those left watching the movies….”

As you continue your trek around the back of the movie theater, you catch bits and pieces of other comments, like “This doesn’t have to be your reality. You have the power to change it, and I can show you how;” and “Love is all there is;” and “Quiet your mind.”

In all the confusion, it finally occurs to you for the first time that you have the choice of what to do next, and it feels exciting as well as scary, because you’ve just taken the first step toward self-responsibility and self-realization.

* * *

Once again, let’s stop here for a minute.

In Books Two and Three of his Enlightenment Trilogy, Jed McKenna makes the distinction between a “Human Child” and a “Human Adult.” This idea is worth playing with for a minute, especially in light of our Movie Theater Metaphor.

First of all, being a Human Child or a Human Adult has virtually no relationship to physical age. The vast majority of the world’s population are Human Children, most of them older than twenty.

“Most human beings cease to develop at around the age of ten or twelve. The average seventy year-old is often a ten year-old with sixty years time-in-grade…. We must learn to see the difference between a Human Adult and a Human Child as easily and unmistakably as we see the difference between a sixty year-old and a six year-old. … Our societies are of, by, and for Human Children, which explains the self-perpetuating nature of this ghoulish malady, as well as most of the silliness we see in the world.”₂

Human Children are the ones sitting in their chairs in the movie theater. They might complain a lot about the movies they’re watching, but they continue to watch without doing anything about it. They’re convinced they are kept in their seats by some powerful, external force, and that they are helpless to change anything. In fact, they believe the thing that needs to change is “out there” – someone or something they have no control over. Even voting is an act of a Human Child, a statement that change is only possible by changing “them.” They’re convinced the movies they’re watching are “reality,” life as it has to be; and they take no responsibility for their condition.

Some Human Children might actually have discovered their shackles were not locked and they were free to stand up and walk whenever they wanted. Perhaps a few might have stood, even fewer took a few steps toward the aisle. But the fear soon becomes overwhelming, and back they go to their seats to put their shackles on again, comforted by the fact they are in such good and plentiful company.

“Human Childhood is the ego-bound state. It is, in [actual] human children, a healthy and natural state. In human adults, however, it’s a hideous affliction. The only way such an affliction could go undetected and unremedied is if everyone were equally afflicted, which is exactly the case. No problem is recognized and no alternative is known, so no solution is sought and no hope for change exists.”₃

Many people are happy to spend their entire lives as Human Children, settled into their chairs, immersed in their movies; and I’m not trying to suggest there is anything “wrong” with that. There isn’t. It’s exactly how it should be for them, and there is no reason at all to try to change their minds or make them into Human Adults, as we will discuss later.

But I assume you’re not one of them, or you wouldn’t be reading this book. You’ve stood up, made your way to the back of the movie theater, and started to behave like a Human Adult. This book is for you – about you – not them.

* * *

In Plato’s Cave, the Human Adult is the freed prisoner who now stands behind the rest, sees the fire and the men walking, casting shadows on the wall. But, as Socrates points out, the shadows still represent “reality,” and the fire and men and animals on the walkway remain some kind of unexplained mystery.

At a minimum, a Human Adult has become aware there is something “wrong” with the life it has been experiencing through the total immersion movies and is not willing to accept that “reality” at face value any more. In the classic 1976 movie Network, news-anchor Howard Beale expresses what a number of new Human Adults feel when he rants, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!”

A Human Child lives in ignorance, thinking they are awake with their eyes open when in fact they are sound asleep with their eyes closed. A new Human Adult has taken the first step of opening their eyes, even though they are still asleep and do not understand what they are now seeing.

Just so no one gets confused, Human Adulthood is not the state of so-called “spiritual enlightenment,” although it’s what most “seekers” are actually looking for and most “gurus” are actually selling. (We’ll talk more about this later as well.)

“The difference between Adulthood and Enlightenment is that the former is awakening within the dreamstate and the latter is awakening from it…. Shallow, early-stage Adulthood is often mistaken for, and sold as, Spiritual Enlightenment, but it’s not. It’s just the first real glimpse of life.”₄

Have you ever had a dream in which you wake up and realize it’s just a dream, but you’re actually still dreaming and never really woke up, that waking up in the dream was part of the dream itself? That’s what Jed is talking about A Human Child is asleep and dreaming, but thinks it's awake and thinks the dreams are real. A Human Adult is asleep and dreaming and wakes up as part of the dream, but doesn't wake up from the dream itself. Like a Human Child, it thinks it's awake, but it's really not.

The next step – actually waking up from the dream – is what this book is about.

Being a Human Adult is not a “bad” way to spend your life, especially if you compare it to Human Childhood. But it does have its limits.

As a Human Adult, you might be able to figure out how to better cope with the movies coming at you that define your life. There are all kinds of groups in the back of the theater claiming to be able to teach you various methods of filtering or improving or avoiding or denying or processing or dealing with the emotions that arise as a result of your immersion in your reality. We’re going to look closely at some of these groups in the next chapter.

But becoming a Human Adult is not the end; it’s really just the beginning.

* * *

I don’t know whether it’s helpful to remember when you transitioned from a Human Child to a Human Adult, getting up from your chair in the movie theater. Stories abound about life-changing car accidents, sudden and unexpected divorces, the loss of a loved one, a near-death experience, drug-induced glimpses of another world, and the like.

For me, it was very clear.

I was in my second semester at a small southern college, saying I wanted to become a doctor, but actually more interested in philosophy and religion. Two years prior a friend of mine in high school had recommended a book called There is a River: The Story of Edgar Cayce, by Thomas Sugrue.₅ One day during the semester break, I suddenly remembered it while browsing through a bookstore in New York City.

Back at school I cut classes for a week and read and re-read that book. It blew my mind. Until then, I had been asleep – sound asleep. My childhood and teenage years were spent being “normal,” like everyone else. Well, maybe my family was slightly more dysfunctional than most; but still, I was seated in my chair, watching the movies, experiencing all the discomfort, wishing things “out there” would change, and trying to find as much pleasure as I could to compensate for the pain.

There is a River ended with about 30 pages of philosophy from what are called Cayce’s “Life Readings.” It talked about the origin and destiny of humanity ("All souls were created in the beginning, and are finding their way back to whence they came."); about reincarnation and astrology; about universal laws (“As ye judge others, so shall ye be judged."); about meditation and extrasensory perception; about body, mind and spirit ("Spirit is the life. Mind is the builder. Physical is the result."); about Atlantis and Earth changes; and about the unknown life of Jesus, whom Cayce called our “elder brother.”

My life changed overnight, in the same way Cayce predicted one day northern Europe would change “as in the twinkling of an eye.” My fraternity brothers didn’t know what to do with me. For one thing, I stopped eating pork, which had been my favorite meal and I would literally live for Wednesdays when pork chops were served for lunch at the frat house. I also spent the next summer working for Cayce’s son, Hugh Lynn, at the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach.

I stayed in school another year after reading the book, although I stopped going to classes. As one cleaning woman once told me, “Don’t worry about it none! What they’re teaching you here ain’t right anyway.” I was a now a Human Adult, although I would need time to adjust to my new surroundings.

The consequences of getting up and walking to the back of the movie theater seemed overwhelming for me. My mother, of course, was against it. So was my girlfriend. I would be wasting a lot of money already spent on an education and maybe never get a diploma. I would most certainly never become a doctor. I had no idea of what I would do next, no prospects on the horizon. I would be leaving all my friends and a life that contained some moments of joy and pleasure for… what?

And perhaps most critically at the time, I would lose my college deferment and be subject to the draft, most likely ending up as a soldier in Vietnam, a war I opposed from the beginning.

In the end, however, my discontent and discomfort with sitting in my chair in the movie theater won out over the fear of leaving it.

FOOTNOTES

1. Wikipedia – Allegory of the Cave – Back to reading

2. McKenna, Jed. The Enlightenment Trilogy - Back to reading

3. Ibid. - Back to reading

4. Ibid. - Back to reading

5. Sugrue, Thomas. There is a River: The Story of Edgar Cayce - Back to reading

CHAPTER 2

JOINING TOGETHER

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New Human Adults who have just made it to the back of the movie theater will usually display some common personality traits.

First, they begin to understand there are possibilities that were inconceivable to them as a Human Child. Even their freedom to walk around is a new sensation that takes some getting used to. Being up and out of their seats has given them new hope and new energy. They don’t necessarily understand what’s happening, but it excites them to find out, to exercise this freedom and explore these possibilities.

Secondly, anger might come to the surface for all the time they spent sitting in their chairs as a Human Child – anger and resentment toward those who had put and kept them there. It doesn’t matter that the shackles were never locked; there can still be the feeling of having been a victim of external forces, for it’s way too soon for a new Human Adult to take full responsibility for their condition as a Human Child.

Next might come defiance, a determination never to go back to their seat. They could if they wanted; it’s not too late. But like the freed prisoner in Plato’s Cave, it’s seems unimaginable for a new Human Adult to consider voluntarily returning to their shackles, chained to their seats, seeing nothing again except the movies playing out in front of them. “I’ll be damned if I’m going back there,” although some eventually do.

And fourthly, they make a decision to change things. What they decide to change – themselves, or what’s “out there” – can depend on a lot of factors; but their defeatist attitude of “can’t change things” as a Human Child becomes an overwhelming obsession of “must change things” as a Human Adult. The movies that make up their life are still playing all around them, the 3D pictures enveloping them, immersing them, coming at them from all angles; and they still view these movies as the only “reality” there is, like the shadows on the cave wall. They also have virtually the same emotional reactions they’ve always had to the movies, which reinforces their need to re-write the scripts.

As a new Human Adult, you most likely experienced at least one or two of these feelings, if not all of them.

A fairly good example of this was the Hippie Movement. The Vietnam War playing out on the movie screen was the catalyst that led a lot of Human Children standing up and shouting “No!” As they walked to the back of the theater (they called it “dropping out”), they soon discovered there were other possibilities of how to live and began experimenting with their new-found freedom. There was anger about the war and the people in charge who were making the movies. There was a defiance to no longer be part of that movie; and there was a decision to make things change. “We Can Make It Better, We Can Change the World Now, We Can Save the Children, We Can Make It Happen,” sang Chicago in 1972.₁

As far as I can tell, the Vietnam War/Hippie Movement of the late 1960’s and early ‘70’s provided the incentive for more new Human Adults than any other event in recent history. Young people by the thousands stood up in their chairs and started walking out. The Movement died fairly quickly; but a lot of people woke up swearing never again to return to their seats, and it left a huge legacy in the back of the movie theater.

The Hippie Movement is also a good example of another common trait of a new Human Adult – the longing to be part of a group. In many cases, it’s more than a longing; it’s a necessity. After all, you’ve spent your entire life surrounded by other Human Children and took comfort in being part of the group. In all the strangeness and newness of the back of the theater, you now seek solace and support as a Human Adult; you search for others wanting to change the same things you do; you start looking around for a new group to join.

Fortunately the back of the movie theater is full of groups consisting of Human Adults who have found others of like mind and banded together for a common cause. Perhaps you might wander around for a little while first, standing on the edge of various gatherings, listening, seeing if you agree with what’s being said by the leader, looking for just the right one. But very soon, you join one of them. You must. You feel too alone and you need camaraderie, other people around you who will let you know you’re not crazy to have left your seat, new friends who will help you change things.

* * *

The year I stayed in college after reading There is a River, I passed the time playing golf, playing bridge, and going to frat parties. In other words, I spent a year roaming around the back of the theater, just trying to escape the movies somehow.

Shortly after my twentieth birthday I joined my first group and participated in the creation of a musical extravaganza to become known as Up With People.₂ The idea was to change the world through music and an ideology called Moral Re-Armament.₃

Moral Re-Armament was based on a certain level of self-responsibility, believing the movies – the world, life, reality – could change if everyone would adhere to a strict moral code of absolute love, absolute purity, absolute honesty, and absolute unselfishness. It was our duty to live that way ourselves, and then go out and get everyone else to live that way as well. We decided to present our cause through a highly entertaining and professional musical, couching our morality in clever and catchy song lyrics such as “Freedom Isn’t Free” and “What Color Is God’s Skin?”₄

For almost two years I gave it all I had, 24/7/365; and I had a hell of a lot of fun and did things and saw places and had experiences that were way over the top. I still have many friends from those days, and some of the lyrics and music Up With People created were very powerful. “Coming Home,” “Where the Roads Come Together,” and “Moon Rider”₅ will probably always move me to tears of joy and appreciation for this time of my life and this group.

It was so much fun that I was able to overlook the glaring inconsistencies and errors in groupthink.₆ For example, in 1966 I was the only one who was against the war out of hundreds directly involved in the program, even in the light of “absolute love.”

But as was inevitable in those days, I was drafted and offered an all-expenses-paid, one-year-long tour of beautiful downtown Vietnam as an Army medic in 1969 – which means I missed Woodstock. I also missed out on the drug scene. In fact, I was in uniform for the major part of the Hippie Movement, which would have been a very interesting group to join had I been able.

Basically, I had three choices when I was drafted, considering my opposition to the war. One, I could flee the country and go to Canada or Sweden, remaining as a Human Adult and joining the group of other young men doing the same. But I was afraid I might never be able to return to the U.S.A., a country I loved and did not want to leave forever.

My second choice was to go to jail as a war resister, again remaining as a Human Adult and joining a group of other young men also choosing incarceration to being a soldier. But I was afraid in this case I would lose the support of my girlfriend and my mother and other friends who simply could not or would not understand. This choice also generated many very big questions about how this jail time could affect my future.

So in the end, and based on my fears, I voluntarily gave up being a Human Adult, left Up With People, went back to my seat in the theater, became a Human Child once more, and spent the next three years immersed in a war movie. The minute I was honorably discharged, I bolted out of my seat again and ran to the back of the movie theater.

Lying on my bunk in Vietnam I had made a decision not to return to Up With People when I got out of the Army, but to get elected President of the United States instead. As President, I figured I could really make some changes; so I joined a political group, starting my career by getting elected to the Arizona state senate at the age of twenty-eight. However, one term as a senator was all I needed to realize that not only did this group have no chance of changing anything, but that government the way it is practiced today is actually the cause of most of the problems in the first place and the thing that requires changing the most.

I ran for re-election anyway, not knowing what else to do; but I made sure I lost with some conscious decisions that could have no other outcome, like dropping my affiliation with any major party and running as an Independent, not campaigning, and taking a woman who was not my wife to the Grand Canyon in full public view.

I nearly won despite it all; but late on election night, as it became clear I would lose, my friends started to file out of the hotel room where we were watching the returns, expressing their condolences and even crying for my loss. I tried hard to look disappointed, but inside I was relieved and happy as I could be.

That’s when I realized there was something wrong with me I should probably address before continuing to try to change the world. I had just thrown away a brilliant political career as the new “darling” of the Arizona Republican Party, and yet I was utterly thrilled with the outcome. That, to me, was completely illogical and inexplicable.

So I started looking for an explanation, searching the back of the theater for a group who could help me understand, and ended up joining one of the most controversial and radical groups I could find: the Church of Scientology. It didn’t take long to make my way to the top, as an OT6 and a Commodore’s Staff Aide to L. Ron Hubbard. I will talk more about this experience in a different context a little later. For now, all I want to say is that my stint with the Church lasted less than two years.

* * *

This can be quite common among Human Adults, to go from one group to another, staying only a limited time. In the last forty years, since the Hippie Movement and the resulting large influx of new Human Adults, more and more groups have sprung up with a wide variety of different approaches and techniques for changing things; so when one group turns out to be unsatisfactory for some reason, another one is always there waiting for you. Today the lobby is overflowing with them, and I want to take a closer look at some of these groups and their characteristics.

In general we can say the basic difference between a Human Child and a Human Adult is the demand for change, coupled with a self-determined action on the part of the Human Adult. Human Children might complain about the movies and their predicament, but they will never do anything about it, paralyzed instead by fear.

Therefore, for a group to last any length of time in the back of the theater, they must cater to and satisfy the Human Adult’s need to be part of a group and their obsession to change things. So they all promise certain very specific things to their followers…

1. They claim they can teach a Human Adult how to change the content of the movies they are watching – how to change their life, their reality – OR

2. They claim they can teach a Human Adult how to change their emotional reactions to the movies they are watching, even if they can’t change the movies themselves – AND

3. They claim their followers will be happier, more prosperous, more loving, more peaceful, more wise, more powerful, more of everything “good” if they follow the group’s instructions.

It’s not possible to talk about all of the individual groups – there are far too many of them – but there is some value in looking at a few of the general categories you have to choose from.

First, there are the “Activists.” These are the groups whose intent is to change the movies themselves by actually doing something: animal activists, environmental activists, political activists, social activists, black activists, human rights activists, consumer activists, women’s activists, peace activists, intentional communities, Save the Whales, Save the Children, Save the Planet, and so on. For example, over the last fifty years there have been more than eighty anti-nuclear groups operating in the United States alone.₇

Then there is a category I will call “altered states of consciousness.” In this group you can find meditation, hypnotherapy, breathing techniques, yoga, prayer, the 12-Step programs, all kinds of prescription and illegal drugs, biofeedback, stress management, laughter therapy, tantric sex, and more. The goal of all these groups is to change the way you view your movies – your life, your reality – by changing your awareness, or in some cases, by escaping the movies entirely through greater unconsciousness.

The third major category is the New Age, which includes a whole slew of yogis, shamans, swamis, and gurus, along with meditation, Abraham, The Secret, the “Law of Attraction,” A Course in Miracles, HeartMath, dolphin-assisted therapy, light and color therapy, Reiki, Emotional Freedom Technique, Electromagnetic Field Balancing (EMF), magnetic field therapy, Thought Field Therapy, Psych-K, channeling, Native American teachings, and the list goes on seemingly forever. These groups attempt to give you some sort of control over your life by offering techniques, ceremonies, and rituals designed to produce an alternative reality, if used correctly – to change your perception about your reality.

And then there are the “Eternal Bliss Seekers,” which can also be called the “Heart-Centered Approach,” touting meditation, positive thinking, compassion, salvation, love, happiness, abundance, prosperity, goodness, beauty, mindfulness, inner tranquility, peace on earth and good will toward men. The basic idea of these groups is that “negativity is bad computer programming”₈ that can be removed through “a powerful journey of the heart in which we come to understand the role each of us plays in creating the life – and the world – we long to live in, the one perfectly designed to help us live in happiness, fulfillment, and bliss.”₉

(You’ll notice that “meditation” appears in each of the last three groups. It’s the technique of choice for many Human Adults – ancient, but very popular these days – and offered as part of the agenda of a number of different groups with different goals – like a cure-all.)

* * *

To be clear and complete, I also need to mention some groups you won’t find in the back of the theater. For example, you won’t find groups representing the world’s major religions – Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism (which comprise about three-quarters of the world’s population). Instead, they are part of the movies playing out on the screen. While these religions might pay lip service to greater happiness in the “here and now,” their underlying and ultimate message is that their followers should not expect any real improvement in their lives – any real change in their reality – while alive, but focus on adhering to various rules and regulations of beliefs and behaviors with the hope of being rewarded later – most typically after they die. This kind of message is perfect for the Human Children sitting glued to their chairs, but not at all acceptable to a Human Adult who wants change NOW!

That doesn’t mean there are no Human Adults involved in these major religions. There are, some. Often they are kind and loving and compassionate and well-intentioned, and have chosen to go back into the seated portion of the theater to minister to the Human Children.

What you more commonly find in the back of the theater are splinter groups of these religions – much smaller clusters of Human Adults who claim to have found new ways to lessen the pain and suffering of life in the moment while clinging to the basic tenets of their faith, such as Zen Buddhists, Baha’i, Advaita Vedanta, Christian Scientists, to name just a few. There is also a very long list₁₀ of other splinter groups, commonly called “cults” (depending on who’s doing the calling), that attract those Human Adults who have given up on conventional religion but still need some kind of organized system of morality. Scientology and Moral Re-Armament, my personal choices in the past, fall into this category.

The same thing holds true for politics. In the United States, major parties such as the Republicans and Democrats are in the movies you watch. But in the back you’ll find the Libertarians, the Green Party, the Constitution Party, the Tea Party, America’s Independent Party, and so on, that afford a Human Adult the opportunity to join a political group as their method of trying to change things, despite the odds, and knowing full well they are up against a well-entrenched two-party system whose real goal is not to change anything (which is why they are preferred and maintained by the votes of the Human Children).

Conventional medicine is also part of the 3D movies, since its main focus is on suppressing symptoms pharmacologically rather than changing the cause of any disease. However, in the back of the theater you’ll find over one-hundred alternative therapy groups such as acupuncture, Alexander technique, AK, aroma therapy, ayurveda, Bach flower remedies, body work, chelation therapy, Chinese medicine, chiropractic, craniosacral therapy, crystal healing, and that’s just through the “C’s” in the alphabet.₁₁

Heterosexuality, marriage, and the nuclear family are part of the movies as well, and these haven’t changed at all in human history. But in the back are groups practicing homosexuality, swinging, polygamy, polyamory, free love, BDSM, voyeurism, exhibitionism, and celibacy, for example.

Basically, if you turn on the TV any day of the week and watch the soap operas, you’ll see what’s in the movies keeping the Human Children entertained and pacified: conventional religions, conventional politics, conventional medicine, and conventional sexuality. What you won’t see in the soaps are the groups available to Human Adults in the back of the theater – with the exception of some mocking and fleeting reference in a movie or two to make sure the Human Children don’t believe any of the promising rumors that might find their way around the theater.

I don’t mean to imply you can’t be a Human Adult if you are a monogamous Republican who still goes to church and sees a doctor. Conventional religion, conventional politics, conventional medicine, and conventional sexuality are the four cornerstones of the movies – the life, the reality – all Human Children and Adults are immersed in every moment of every day, no matter where they are standing in the movie theater. The “conventional” is all they have ever known, never really questioned, and therefore find them hard to leave. This is especially true of new Human Adults who need to belong to a group and have not yet found sufficient replacements in the back of the theater.

What I am saying is that this will change over time. As a Human Adult becomes more comfortable in its new surroundings and finds new groups to join, conventional religion, conventional politics, and conventional medicine will be replaced by groups in the back of the theater, while conventional sexuality hangs on for dear life.

* * *

Obviously, there are many, many more groups for Human Adults to join than I have mentioned – literally hundreds, probably over a thousand of them now, some of which do not fall into one of my main categories, either. For example, there are more than two dozen “UFO religions” listed in the Wikipedia₁₂that can be found in the back of the theater. So this was not meant to be a complete list of groups or categories, but intended to give a cursory idea of the kinds of opportunities available to a new Human Adult; and I don’t know any new Human Adult who has not joined at least one of these groups within a short time of leaving their chair.

After Scientology, I joined the Chiropractic group, who quite clearly state their goal is to change the world by correcting vertebral subluxation, one person at a time; and I stayed connected with this group for more than twenty years.

The fun part is that you can join more than one group at a time if both groups will permit it. While part of the Chiropractic group, I also later belonged to Loving More, Applied Metapsychology, the Royal-Priest channeling group, Al-Anon, and the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis.

While not actually joining officially, I also “audited” groups connected with the “Seth” books, with Walsch’s Conversations with God and Sitchin’s Earth Chronicles, with A Course in Miracles, Urantia, Eckankar, meditation, numerology, astrology, Tai Chi, Focusing, and Rosicrucianism. I attended numerous self-help seminars and workshops, tried The Secret, listened to Abraham, watched What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole, and read everything I could from Peter Marshall, John Bradshaw, Sai Baba, Ayn Rand, J. Krishnamurti, U.G. Krishnamurti, Deepak Chopra, Eckart Tolle, Mahatma Gandhi, and others.

Then in 1993 I joined one of the most radical and promising groups I ever encountered in the back of the movie theater. It was an intentional community called ZEGG that had a ten-year history before I joined, now located about an hour outside of Berlin, Germany. I was attracted to this group by their Twelve Theses for a Non-Violent Society₁₃, written by Dieter Duhm, and their practice of free love. ZEGG no longer promotes the writings of Dr. Duhm, nor do they practice free love any more. The majority of people I knew there during the 1990’s have since moved on to create another intentional community called Tamera in southern Portugal, which I’ll talk about at a later time. But for more than a decade I thought this group was really going to change things and I was excited to be part of it.

Which group(s) did you join?

FOOTNOTES

1. Chicago V. Dialogue, Part Two (1972), re-mastered and re-released in 2002 by Rhino Records – Back to reading

2. Wikipedia – Up With People – Back to reading

3. Wikipedia – Moral Re-Armament – Back to reading

4. Up With People song lyrics – Back to reading

5. Ibid. – Back to reading

6. Wikipedia – Groupthink – Back to reading

7. Wikipedia - List of anti-nuclear groups in the United States – Back to reading

8. Publisher’s Weekly review of Terry Cole-Whittaker’s book, Live Your Bliss – Back to reading

9. Welshons, John E., author of One Soul, One Love, One Heart in his review of Terry Cole-Whittaker’s book, Live Your Bliss – Back to reading

10. List of cults – Back to reading

11. List of alternative therapy groups – Back to reading

12. Wikipedia - List of UFO religions – Back to reading

13. Twelve Theses for a Non-Violent Society – Back to reading

CHAPTER 3

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

Back to the Table of Contents

Virtually all Human Adults have gathered together in various groups in the back of the theater, each group trying to discover how to change their reality, usually with a leader providing guidance to the followers, often with some written text or rules or guidelines. Each Human Adult has achieved at least a modicum of self-responsibility at this point; and some of the groups even give lip service to “individual change,” although the main focus is still on “them,” “out there,” who continue to involve people like us in movies full of pain and suffering.

But as I said earlier, being a Human Adult is not a “bad” way to spend your life; and there are some amazing results that can be achieved by belonging to one or more of these groups.

It’s possible, for example, the content of the 3D movies in which you are still immersed might appear to change slightly after applying something you learned in a group. Some Human Adults might see more changes than others.

It’s also possible the movie content doesn’t change, but you find certain techniques of how to better deal with the pain and suffering inflicted by the movies. Some Human Adults might learn to deal with it better than others.

You can even have all kinds of mystical or extrasensory or paranormal or psychic experiences, moments of “union with God” or “oneness with All That Is” or “cosmic consciousness” or so-called “enlightenment.” You could learn to control your heart rate, lie on a bed of nails, move objects and bend spoons, make parking spaces appear where you want them, do psychic surgery, have out-of-body experiences, become telepathic or clairvoyant, even levitate.

If these are your goals, you can accomplish them all as a Human Adult in the back of the movie theater, assuming you find the right group and apply yourself diligently to the task.

But there’s a problem. A big one. Several big ones, as a matter of fact.

When they arrive at the back of the movie theater, most Human Adults believe, ultimately, life should not include any pain and suffering at all, that your reality could actually be one of constant and abiding joy, abundance, power, and love – Heaven on Earth, if you will. But you’re not there yet, despite all the work you’ve done and all the techniques you’ve learned and all the meditating you’ve “satsang” through.

Why not?

For two reasons. One is the belief in life without pain and suffering is just that – a belief; and there’s no evidence this belief is true. Have you ever met – I’m not talking about hearing or reading second-hand stories from the past – have you ever met anyone in present time living in constant and true and abiding joy, abundance, power, and love? (“Constant and true and abiding” eliminates those few who spend their lives trying to fake eternal bliss.) If it were possible, don’t you think it would have happened just once to some Human Adult in the back of the theater whom you know, or your friend knows, or your friend’s friend knows? After all, many of these groups claim it’s possible for everyone to achieve.

The second reason is that life inside the movie theater is not designed to include constant and abiding joy, abundance, power, and love, as we’ll see in a later chapter. It will never happen there.

True, you might be able to have more financial success, for example, as a result of joining some group; but your love life then goes to hell. Or you might find your “soulmate” and have years of marital bliss, but for some reason you can’t make enough money for the things you want. Or many circumstances around you can seem to be going well, but then you or a family member or a loved one suffer an unexpected accident or illness and everything changes again. You might even develop a mystical power or two and have moments of “oneness,” only to have the high wear off eventually and discover you’re still not happy with your life most of the time.

The truth is, as a member of a group in the back of the movie theater, you will never change the basic storyline of the movies, at least not in any significant and lasting way, or in the way you think you want to. Many have tried, but virtually none has succeeded; so you’re not alone in your desire or in your frustration.

Put very simply, a Human Adult in the back of the movie theater can never get all its ducks in a row at one time, no matter what it does or believes or pretends. It’s just not possible.

Why?

The first huge problem is that none of these groups actually work – none of them produce the results they claim they can.

Before you slam this book closed and try to defend your personal choice of a particular group or two, please take an honest and objective moment to consider…

~ when you look at the world today, do you really think the human race as a whole is more peaceful, more loving, more tolerant, more fulfilled, happier, safer, better fed and better housed than it was ten years ago? Or fifty or a hundred years ago? When you watch the evening news, doesn’t the opposite appear to be true? Doesn’t it seem like the world – as portrayed in the 3D movies surrounding you – is heading in the “wrong” direction, away from constant and abiding joy, abundance, power, and love and into greater depths of pain and suffering despite all the efforts of all the different groups that have grown exponentially over the same period of time?

~ after hundreds upon hundreds of years, of hours upon hours of meditation by millions upon millions of people, not much has been achieved, other than maybe a few very isolated cases. After that much meditation, where are all the so-called “enlightened ones,” and why don’t they comprise a bigger percentage of our population?

~ if The Secret or the “Law of Attraction” actually worked, we should see a large number of their followers manifesting wonderful things in their lives on a regular basis. I wouldn’t even require a 100% success rate to consider these kinds of techniques effective. If The Secret or the “Law of Attraction” worked 50% of the time for 50% of the people who tried it, I might deem it worthy of attention and praise. But when only a very few people get results only a very few times out of many when they use these techniques….

~ after all the positive thinking and compassion and pilgrimages and prayers and altars and sweat lodges and stone circles and ceremonies and rituals and sit-ins and demonstrations and protests and endless Course in Miracles’ meetings, we’re still no closer to peace on this planet than we’ve ever been. Even the Hippie Movement had little or nothing to do with ending the Vietnam War, and at the moment we’re involved in two more wars just like it.

~ all the profound changes in human history have come from a single individual, not a group – both “good” (Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Moses, Confucius, Martin Luther, Copernicus, Einstein, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and Cai Lun – who invented paper in China in 105 AD) and “bad” (Ghengis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.).

I repeat, none of the groups in the back of the movie theater produces anything close to what they claim for the overwhelming number of their followers. I do not say any of this judgmentally; I am not blaming them, or criticizing them, or saying they are “wrong” for their lack of success. (In fact, I know their lack of success is perfect for the way the movie theater is designed.) I am merely stating fact, pointing to the elephant in the room, explaining that the emperor is naked.

Nor am I saying none of these groups work because they didn’t work for me. As you read, I was involved with a lot of so-called spiritual and self-help groups for more than forty years, involving hundreds if not thousands of people. I have never met one person out of those thousands whom I would say has achieved what the group promised. Have you?

I also want to remind you that I decline to be a guru, teacher, coach, mentor, or leader of any group, so I have no vested interest in making them all “wrong” and myself “right” in order to get you to follow me instead. I am not interested in “followers,” so I am completely free to tell you the truth as I see it, and as anyone else can see it if they look closely and carefully and honestly.

* * *

Some of the groups conveniently explain why they are so ineffective, offering reasons like, “No pain, no gain,” or “It takes years and years, and even lifetimes, for our technique to work,” or “You must be doing something wrong,” or “Your desire is not pure and sincere enough,” or “You’re not spiritual enough to make it work,” or “Remember, there are sixty-four levels to go through to be enlightened.”

The most common excuse a group makes for its ineffectiveness is, “we don’t have enough people in our group to make it work.” So every once in a while, one or more of these groups will go back into the main theater and try to get some of the Human Children up out of their seats to join them, with some success some of the time, on the theory more members in the group will make it more effective. Occasionally a few new Human Adult recruits make their way to the back of the theater as a result, but not enough to make any difference.

My biggest objection to things like The Secret and the “Law of Attraction,” for example, is that when they don’t work, we feel like it’s our fault, that there’s something wrong with us. After all, there are supposedly all these other people who use them successfully, so it must be me. I’m not good enough to make it work. I’m doing something wrong. I’m worthless. I’m a failure. The problem is “all these other people who use them successfully” don’t exist either. Sure, there are isolated cases where someone used The Secret and “manifested” a new car – we’ll find out later whether that was actually true – and, of course, Rhonda Byrne probably “manifested” a lot of money for herself when she made up The Secret.

The Truth is there is nothing wrong with you, and there never has been; the error is with the group and its philosophy, technique, ceremony or ritual. They simply don’t work consistently for even a small fraction of their followers.

If any group in the back of the theater were really successful in producing constant and true and abiding joy, abundance, power, and love, don’t you think word would get around quickly and everyone else would leave their group and join that one? If any one of them were even moderately successful in changing the movies or a person’s reaction to them, thereby providing real relief from the pain and suffering – rather than being just a temporary and well-marketed fad – don’t you think most Human Adults would be beating down their door to join? Instead what we see are new groups popping up like popcorn in our movie theater. What more proof does anyone need that the existing groups don’t work?

When Human Adults can step back from the groupthink and be honest with themselves, they know their group doesn’t work. The problem is we don’t want to admit it, because one of these groups has to work. We want them to work, very badly. We need them to work. We have to believe the group we’ve joined offers us the relief we seek from the pain and suffering. If none of the groups work, we’ll feel hopeless – no better off than the Human Children still sitting in their seats – and that’s the worst feeling in the world, to be avoided at all costs.

There comes a time for many Human Adults when they cannot escape or deny the obvious forever and decide the particular group they belong to at the time is not working – is not successful in creating the change they want. At that point they will simply move on to a different group, still convinced some group must work and all they need to do is keep looking. Over the lifetime of a Human Adult, they might belong to a few, if not dozens, of these groups, trying desperately – and futilely – to find one that works, that does what it says it can do, that offers constant and abiding joy, abundance, power, and love.

* * *

Jed McKenna doesn’t have very nice things to say about the yogis and swamis and shamans and gurus and leaders of all these ineffective groups, calling them “snake oil salesmen,” as if they were doing something “wrong.”

“Gurus and meditation and spiritual teachings are all gentle deceptions meant to soothe the inner coward, not forge the inner hero…. Gurus are the worst egotists the world has ever seen. All gurus are welfare organizations providing petty experiences to their followers. The guru game is a profitable industry: try and make two million dollars a year any other way.”₁

While all this might be factually accurate, I don’t share Jed’s judgment that goes along with it. Yes, maybe there are a few leaders of these groups who are out to make a name and fame and fortune for themselves, and realize leading a group of Human Adults in the back of the theater can produce exactly that for them, even if the group doesn’t produce any results for its followers. But even that isn’t “wrong.”

On the whole, I like to think many of these leaders are sincerely trying to find some answers. After all, someone has to be able to figure this out, don’t they? Please?

But all leaders of all groups end up hitting an impasse, mainly because their philosophy or technique or practice contains major and irreparable inconsistencies.

There is a theory in social psychology called “cognitive dissonance₂,” which is “an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing them.”₃

As a Human Adult, for example, you may be opposed to cruelty to animals, but you still want to eat meat. This causes you a problem you must resolve in your mind somehow.

“An early version of cognitive dissonance theory appeared in Leon Festinger's 1956 book, ‘When Prophecy Fails.’ This book gave an inside account of belief persistence in members of a UFO doomsday cult, and documented the increased proselytization they exhibited after the leader's ‘end of the world’ prophecy failed to come true. The prediction of the Earth's destruction, supposedly sent by aliens to the leader of the group, became a ‘disconfirmed expectancy’ that caused dissonance between the cognitions, ‘the world is going to end’ and ‘the world did not end.’ Although some members abandoned the group when the prophecy failed, most of the members lessened their dissonance by accepting a new belief, that the planet was spared because of the faith of the group.”₄

Jed McKenna suggests a Human Adult will experience something similar which he calls “Spiritual Dissonance”….

“A common example of Spiritual Dissonance would be: If God loves us, why does He allow so much suffering? The certainty of God’s love is the internal belief. The obviousness of human suffering is the external reality. Is God unable to end suffering? No, we must answer, because He can do whatever He wants. Therefore, He must allow or even cause suffering. But how can that be if He loves us? Something somewhere has to give or, preferably, we avoid asking the question in the first place.”₅

Different groups offer different solutions for this Spiritual Dissonance. One common technique is to create a new belief that builds a bridge between the two conflicting ones:

Internal belief: “God loves us.”

External reality: “There is suffering in the world.”

Bridge belief: “We only suffer because we are not worthy of God’s love.”

Or…

Internal belief: “We were made in the image of God, who is perfect in every way.”

External reality: “We do bad things as human beings.”

Bridge belief: “Life is a school, a training center, where we are supposed to learn and mature into perfect souls.”

My favorite example comes from my recent experience in the intentional community of Tamera in southern Portugal. One of the spiritual leaders there knows, deep in her heart, “judgment is wrong” – her first contradiction, for to say “judgment is wrong” is a judgment itself. But because of her compassion for others, she wants to change the world and make it a better place to live. She’s smart enough to realize wanting to change the world is a judgment things are wrong and need to be changed, so she comes up with a solution: “We must accept things just as they are, without judgment, and then we can change them.”

What ?! Simple logic says if you don’t judge something as “good” or “bad,” or “right” or “wrong,” you will see that “something” as perfect exactly the way it is. Any action you then take will not be motivated by the need or wish to change it at all. (We’ll talk a lot more about this concept in later parts of the book.)

But none of the groups in the back of the theater is completely logical. Glaring contradictions show up very quickly in all the groups when an honest and objective mind shines the light of reason and discernment on them.

Some groups simply pass off their inconsistencies to a higher authority: “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” or “It’s the job of the clergy to grapple with such imponderable issues.” Or they tell their followers to ignore the tough questions altogether, or deny them, or simply stay occupied and distracted so these kinds of questions and countless others like them can never gain a foothold in our awareness.

The main objective, however, is to stop the discomfort….

“The most sincere seekers are … not seeking truth or answers; they’re seeking relief from Spiritual Dissonance. Providing this relief is the lifeblood of the religious and spiritual marketplace. It has nothing to do with truth or awakening. In fact, just the opposite. In the final analysis, stripped of all its holy pretensions, the entire spiritual marketplace is really nothing more than an existential quick-lube shop, and while there may be an endless variety in packaging, there is really only one product. Spiritual Consonance is what all seekers seek; an end to discomfort…. But the consonance they seek can only be found in deeper unconsciousness.”₆

I still have many, many people I call my friends in all of the groups I’ve belonged to – intelligent, well-meaning, well-intentioned Human Adults who care a lot about this world, probably a lot like you; and somehow it becomes easy to overlook these contradictions in order not to rock the boat the group is sailing in. The truth is we don’t want our group to have inconsistencies and contradictions; so they don’t, as far as we are concerned, even though they are written all over the elephant in the middle of the living room.

Recently one of the leaders of a group I belonged to declared its Jewish members should no longer observe Shabbat, supposedly to help them break old patterns of religious tradition on the way to creating a new culture. However, the main group itself – basically Christian – continued to hold their Sunday morning services, complete with Amazing Grace as a hymn, and even called one of their daily meetings the “Gospel Hour.” No one spoke up or asked questions or issued a yellow card for hypocrisy.

When you’re outside one of these groups looking objectively at their beliefs, it’s relatively easy to spot many of the inconsistencies and contradictions. When you’re inside the group, however, it’s very difficult not to succumb to groupthink. After all, there has to be some group that can produce what they claim, doesn’t there? You’ve looked everywhere and decided the group you’re in is the best you’re going to find, so who are you to question the wisdom and authority of the group leader, even in the face of obvious illogic? And you still have an overwhelming need to be part of a group and not be “out there” all alone, so you will swallow almost anything that sounds half-way plausible in order to justify and explain away the fallacies in their thinking.

One of the best techniques any group can use to cover up their inconsistencies and contradictions is called “Crimestop,” as defined by George Orwell in his novel 1984….

“Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.”₇

* * *

Can all these groups be “wrong” about everything all of the time? On the surface, that sounds quite ridiculous and impossible. But think about it for a minute.

Imagine you’re trying to solve a long and involved math problem, and the first equation is “2+2=?”. If you get that answer wrong, every other calculation you make after that is going to be wrong, too.

Well, technically I guess that isn’t exactly true. There may be other equations within the problem that don’t depend on your first answer, and you could get them right. You could also make other mathematical mistakes in the process and just happen – by chance – to arrive at a right answer along the way.

But your final answer is always going to be wrong. There’s no way around that. In other words, if your basic premise is faulty, all subsequent results that depend on that basic premise will be faulty as well.

“In life, contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”₈

“It means there aren’t millions of things wrong, just one, right at the source, and everything else that appears wrong stems from that single core error.”₉

This is not just true of math problems; it’s also true of every religion, philosophy, spiritual practice, self-improvement technique, belief system, ceremony and ritual.

Every group in the back of the theater is “wrong” and cannot and will not produce the results they claim they can; and the simple reason is that they all begin with the same incorrect premise. In the next few chapters, we're going to find out what that incorrect premise is.

* * *

Everyone is looking for solutions to lessen the pain and suffering of life, to change the reality they feel subjected to in the 3D movies surrounding them. The problem is those answers cannot be found in the movie theater. Some have come close at times, but no one has put it all together, because it cannot be put all together. No Human Adult is going to find constant and abiding joy, abundance, power, and love as long as they are in the back of the movie theater. It doesn’t work that way.

“To the best of my knowledge, spiritually-inclined people, from all walks and disciplines, at all stages, are really doing nothing more than maintaining or deepening their entrenchment, and maybe piddling around with mildly altered states.”₁₀

I’m sure by now you have figured out the most important reason why: All the Human Adults and all the groups they belong to are still inside the movie theater. Not one freed prisoner has ever left Plato’s Cave at this point in the metaphor; and with very few exceptions, everyone still considers the shadows on the wall – the 3D movies they are watching – to be “real.”

Once in a while, someone will look up at the black ball hanging from the center of the movie theater and see those bright lights shooting toward the wrap-around screens, wondering what the hell that’s all about. But almost no one seems to know.

And the sign on the door in the back wall says, “Do Not Enter – Extremely dangerous.”

FOOTNOTES

1. McKenna, Jed. The Enlightenment Trilogy – Back to reading

2. Wikipedia – Cognitive dissonance – Back to reading

3. Festinger, L. Theory of cognitive dissonance – Back to reading

4. Festinger, L., Riecken, H.W., & Schachter, S. When prophecy fails – Back to reading

5. McKenna, Jed. Id. – Back to reading

6. Ibid. – Back to reading

7. Orwell, George. 1984 – Back to reading

8. Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged – Back to reading

9. McKenna, Jed. Id. – Back to reading

10. Ibid. – Back to reading

CHAPTER 4

THE LIBRARY

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There are three other doors in the back of the theater I haven’t mentioned. One has a sign saying, “Men’s Room;” another says “Ladies Room;” and above the third door is a sign saying, “Library,” and that door is never closed.

In between groups, or as I began to realize the particular group I belonged to at the time wasn’t going to produce what they were offering and my membership was coming to an end, I would go into this Library and read, looking for new inspiration and hope. I’ve mentioned in passing some of the titles and authors I spent time with, and I had the chance to study many of the texts written by the founders and leaders of various groups, saving me the trouble of actually joining that group in order to discover its inconsistencies and contradictions.

Most of the books in the Library aren’t worth mentioning, at least in this discussion. But there is some very important information I discovered while reading you should know about, if you don’t already – information absolutely critical to anyone wishing to change their reality.

So I’m going to make a big jump right now from philosophy and religion to science, from metaphors and analogies to cold, hard scientific experiments. The subject is quantum physics and what has become known (and widely misunderstood) as the “Holographic Universe” – monumental discoveries made in the last few decades which literally change everything we have believed about our physical universe.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to get scientifically technical or say something any Human Adult couldn’t understand. But if you are still not satisfied with any of the groups you’ve joined – if you’re looking around trying to find out why none of the groups have produced anything close to what you want to experience and what you think is possible to experience – then you should spend the next few chapters in the Library with me; and bring your computer.

I want to say at the outset I am not an expert in quantum physics, so I have invited the real experts – Ph.D.’s in physics, professors of quantum physics at major universities worldwide, authors of many books – to speak to you directly by using a lot of their written quotes and video interviews. Basically, I want to ensure you what you will be reading will not be my opinions, but those of the people who really know what they’re talking about.

I’ve included a number of links to YouTube videos to watch, and I strongly suggest you visit those links and watch those videos as you read.

Okay. Here we go…

* * *

We’ve known for a long time – at least, I was taught in school more than fifty years ago – the physical world around us is not as “solid” as it looks and feels. In fact, the universe is made up of mostly empty space.

This becomes very clear when we take a ride on a rocket into outer space and see so much “nothing” between a few particles of matter called stars and galaxies. As the technology has improved and we have gone deeper and deeper into “inner space” as well, we find the same thing in the atomic and sub-atomic worlds – mostly “nothing.”

The very best and most fun way to experience this for yourself is to watch a nine-minute video called Powers of Ten, from the office of Charles and Ray Eames, which they produced for IBM in 1977. You can watch it here.

There have been other videos made along the same lines: Cosmic Voyage (1996, produced for IMAX and narrated by Morgan Freeman), and Cosmic Zoom (1968, produced by the National Film Board of Canada.)

The most important thing to see in these videos is that “outer space” and “inner space” look very much alike; there’s hardly anything there except empty space.

For example, if you took the nucleus of a hydrogen atom and blew it up to the size of a basketball, the electron that defines the outermost “edge” of that atom would be twenty miles away from the nucleus. And in between? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Just empty space.

“Within all the atoms and molecules – all the space within them – the particles take up an insignificant amount of the volume of an atom.”₁

“In fact, the universe is mostly empty.”₂

So… the first thing we have to understand is that matter is not “solid,” even though it looks and feels that way to us.

“Matter is not what we have long thought it to be.”₃

Matter is, in fact, full of empty space.

* * *

The Powers of Ten video ends at the limit of our understanding at that time (1977), looking at a single proton in the nucleus of a carbon atom.

But as the technology improved over the years, and scientists were able to dive deeper and deeper into “inner space,” they discovered the very small particles they found did not behave as they were supposed to, at least not according to all the laws of physics we had believed for the last hundreds of years.

The most famous experiment that caused a real commotion is called the Double Slit. It was actually first done with light in 1801 by an English scientist, Thomas Young. Young demonstrated that light was not actually a particle, as had been believed forever, but acted like a wave instead.

Then in 1961, this same experiment was performed with electrons rather than light₄, and finally in 1974 with just one electron at a time₅. Since then it has been repeated and refined and repeated again, over and over, with the same result every time.

In September 2002, this Double Slit experiment was voted “the most beautiful experiment”₆ by readers of Physics World, and noted quantum physicist Richard Feynman has said “all of quantum mechanics can be gleaned from carefully thinking through the implications of this single experiment.”₇

That’s how important this experiment is, and how much it has changed everyone’s thinking of how the world works.

So let’s take a look at how this experiment is done and why its results are so startling….

We’re going to start by taking small pieces of matter, like little BB’s, and shooting a stream of them out of a gun against a barrier that has a single slit in it.

Behind the barrier is a sensitive screen, so when a BB hits it, it makes a mark, like this….

Most of the BB’s hit the barrier, but the ones that go through the slit hit the screen and make a pattern just like the shape of the slit.

All that makes perfect sense. So now we’ll add a second slit in the barrier…

…and shoot the BB’s at it again; and we get what we’d expect to get: a pattern of two slits on the screen.

Okay, so far so good. Now, what would happen if we sent waves of water toward the screen instead of firing BB’s at it?

With just one slit in the barrier, part of the wave goes through the slit and forms a pattern on the screen that looks a lot like the BB pattern with only one slit. The most intensity on the screen is where the top of the wave hits, directly in line with the slit.

But if we put a barrier with two slits in it between the waves and the screen, a completely different thing happens.

When the water goes through both slits, the new waves created by the slits on the other side of the barrier hit each other on the way to the screen.

When the top of one wave hits the bottom of another wave, they cancel each other out. This is called “destructive interference.” You can easily see this when you drop two pebbles in a pond some distance apart and watch what happens when the ripples meet. So when we send waves through a barrier with two slits, we get what is called an “interference pattern” on the screen, like this….

The bright lines on the screen are where the tops of the waves joined each other (constructive interference) and then made it to the screen. The dark spaces in between are where the top of one wave hit the bottom of another wave (destructive interference), canceling them both out and never making it to the screen.

So, when we send “particles of matter,” like the BB’s, through two slits, we get two definite patterns on the screen that look like the slits they came through. When we send “waves” through two slits, we get an interference pattern on the screen.

Simple enough. Now let’s try this experiment with electrons instead of BB’s….

We have always thought about an electron as a really, really small BB whirling around the nucleus of an atom – a very small “particle of matter,” and solid, like a BB. So we would expect to see the same pattern on the screen we got when we shot BB’s; and we do when there is one slit in the barrier….

…and when we shoot a beam of electrons through two slits in the barrier, we would expect to get a pattern of two slits on the screen just like the BB’s.

BUT WE DON’T!

Instead, we get the same interference pattern we got when we sent “waves” through two slits.

WAVES

ELECTRONS

Originally, scientists thought this might be because they were firing a lot of electrons toward the screen at one time, and maybe some of the electrons were crashing into each other on the other side of the barrier, canceling each other out and not making it to the screen. By 1974 they were finally able to develop a way to fire one electron at a time at the screen, so there was no way possible for them to interfere with each other. But they still got an interference pattern.

(To watch a short and well-done animated video of this Double Slit experiment from What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole, click here.)

How is that possible? How is it possible to send one tiny particle of “matter” at a time through two slits and have it form a wave interference pattern?

There was only one explanation that made any sense: An electron is a wave rather than a particle; it is not a solid piece of matter as we have always thought!

More recent experiments have discovered the same thing holds true for the nucleus of an atom, not just the electrons.

“Matter is not what we have long thought it to be. To the scientist, matter has always been thought of as sort of the ultimate in that which is static and predictable…. We like to think of space as empty and matter as solid. But in fact, there is essentially nothing to matter whatsoever; it’s completely insubstantial. Take a look at an atom. We think of it as a kind of hard ball. Then we say, ‘Oh, well no, not really…it’s this little tiny point of really dense matter right at the center….’ But then it turns out that that’s not even right. Even the nucleus, which we think of as so dense, pops in and out of existence just as readily as the electrons do.”₈

So the very building blocks of what we call our “physical universe” – the nucleus and electrons of atoms – are not just particles of matter, but in fact exist as waves. In quantum physics this is called “wave-particle duality.”

That blew everybody’s mind; but it’s not the end of the story….

FOOTNOTES

1. Tiller, William, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Stanford University. What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole – Back to reading

2. Hameroff, Stuart, M.D., Associate Director of the Center for Consciousness, University of Arizona. Id. – Back to reading

3. Satinover, Jeffrey, M.D., Ph.D., Teaching Fellow in Physics, Yale University. Id. – Back to reading

4. Jönsson C., Electron diffraction at multiple slits, American Journal of Physics (1974) Volume 42, Issue 1, pp. 4-115 – Back to reading

5. The Merli-Missiroli-Pozzi Two-Slit Electron Interference Experiment – Back to reading

6. Physics World – Back to reading

7. Greene, Brian. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory – Back to reading

8. Satinover, Jeffrey. Id. – Back to reading

CHAPTER 5

THE FIELD

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Electrons are both waves and particles? One minute they act like a particle, and the next minute they act like a wave?

At the time, no one could really believe any of this was actually true. Something must be wrong, they thought….

So the scientists modified the experiment to “watch” (with a measuring device) a single electron as it went through the double slits to see if it really acted like a wave instead of a particle.

However, the moment they observed the electron, an even stranger thing happened. They got a standard “particle” pattern on the screen that looked exactly as if they had fired BB’s through the two slits.

The simple act of “watching” the electron meant it went back to behaving like a particle instead of a wave, and therefore only went through one slit, not both, and formed a pattern like the BB’s.

So… the final conclusion is this: In its natural state, an electron is a wave rather than a particle, until it is observed. Then it becomes a particle with a fixed position in space and time.

“The electron is very peculiar in the sense that when you’re not looking, the electron can be here, can be there, or can be over there…. It can be all over this room, so to speak. But whenever we look – this is the strange thing about this electron – we always find them to be in one particular Geiger counter, although we have a room full of Geiger counters. This is the fundamentally important stuff about the electrons.”₁

“There is compelling evidence that the only time quanta* ever manifest as particles is when we are looking at them. When an electron isn’t being looked at, it is always a wave.”₂

(*In the early 1900s, scientists had started using the term “quanta” referring to the energy associated with an electron bound to an atom (at rest) which results in the stability of atoms, and of matter in general. So the term “quantum mechanics,” and now more commonly “quantum physics,” has to do with the study of electrons and their energy. “The word “quantum” is also synonymous with “wave/particle,” a term that is used to refer to something that possesses both particle and wave qualities.”₃)

Now this was truly radical – an electron is a wave until it is observed, and then it becomes a particle!

The ramifications are enormous. It means reality – the physical universe which we have always thought of to be “solid and predictable” – is not “real,” not “solid and predictable” at all, because the basic building blocks of that universe are not particles of matter, but waves of possibilities – waves of potential locations where an electron might appear as a particle when it is observed.

But who is this “observer?” And how does an observer change the electron from a wave into a particle?

The first question is not easy to answer completely at the moment. The “observer” can be a human being looking at something; it can be a machine or a device set up to watch, record, or measure something; it can literally be anything that attempts to “see” something “out there” in the physical universe. But there is another level to the answer which needs more information before it can make sense; so we’ll just have to wait.

Right now it’s worth repeating the inescapable conclusions of the Double Slit experiment: According to quantum physics, the atoms (nucleus and electrons) that make up the physical universe we consider to be so solid and so real only appear to be solid and real when they are being observed. When they are not being observed, they return to a wave state of infinite possible locations.

(To watch a short and well-done animated video of how an “observer” affects the Double Slit experiment, from What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole, click here.)

So now let’s talk about how an observer changes an electron from a wave into a particle….

Wait a minute! No one really knows the answer to the question of how – or why – the observer changes an electron from a wave into a particle. The experts can only speculate….

“Particles aren’t really what they seem to be. They’re momentary manifestations, momentary ‘poppings’ of this quantum wave function in which there is no particle – there’s just this waviness which can spontaneously pop out as particles.”₄

In other words, when an electron is viewed by an observer, these waves of possibilities “pop” and assume a specific location in space and time, which is what we see as “reality.” This is called “collapsing the wave function.”

“Collapsing the wave function” can be very successfully explained and predicted mathematically, using complex quantum mathematics; but it’s very hard to describe in simple English. Basically, it means an electron normally lives in a wave state (a wave function) that includes many possibilities of where it could end up as a particle; and when the electron is observed, those multiple wave states are “collapsed” to one state, the state of being a particle in a specific location.

Physicist Nick Herbert says this sometimes causes him to imagine that, behind our back, the world (where we are not looking and cannot observe) is always “a radically ambiguous and ceaselessly flowing quantum soup.”₅ But whenever we turn around and try to see the soup, our glance instantly freezes it and turns it back into “reality.” Herbert believes this makes us all a little like Midas, the legendary king who never knew the feel of silk or the caress of a human hand because everything he touched turned to gold. “Likewise humans can never experience the true texture of quantum reality because everything we touch turns to matter.”₆

So where are these electrons living as waves of possibilities when no one is observing them and collapsing their wave function into a particle?

The answer to that question has gone through a lot of revision over the years, and has been called a lot of things as the research has progressed, including:

~ the “Planck Scale” (by the physicist Max Planck)

~ the “implicate order” (by the physicist David Bohm)

~ the “vacuum state”

~ the “quantum wave function”

~ the “zero point field”

~ the “superstring field”

~ the “M” field

~ the “unified field”

Today it is mainly just called “The Field.” In her book, The Field, Lynn McTaggert defines it simply as “a field of all possibility.”₇

Everything you can think of, and everything you can’t think of, and everything no one can think of already exists in this Field as waves of possibilities.

Dr. John Hagelin explains…

“Progress in our understanding of the universe through physics over the past quarter century has been exploring deeper levels of natural law, from the macroscopic to the microscopic, from the molecular to the atomic to the nuclear to the subnuclear levels of nature’s functioning…. and what we’ve discovered at the core basis of the universe, the foundation of the universe, is a single universal field of intelligence…. So all the forces of nature, and all the so-called ‘particles’ of nature… are now understood to be… just different ripples on a single ocean of existence…. It’s called the “unified field,” or “superstring field,” at the basis of everything – mind and matter…. That field is a non-material field. Planets, trees, people, animals, are all just waves of vibration of this underlying unified superstring field…. It’s the fountainhead of all the laws of nature; all the fundamental forces, all the fundamental particles, all the laws governing life at every level of the universe have their unified source in the unified field…. It is pure abstract potential, which rises in waves of vibration to give rise to the particles, to the people, to everything we see in the vast universe…. This isn’t the world of electrons; it’s the world of potential electrons…. And that’s what we’re made of.”₈

…and Dr. Fred Alan Wolf puts it this way…

“Physicists give this a name; they call it a ‘quantum wave function,’ because it seems ‘wavy.’ However, this wave function isn’t just a wave of matter, like an ocean wave or a sound wave, or any kind of wave of matter. It’s a wave of possibility; it’s a kind of ‘thought’ wave. And because it is a wave of thought, or possibility, or ‘not-matter,’ it’s invisible to us. But we can’t explain what we do see as matter…unless we picture that these matter particles somehow come out from or emerge from these thought-wave patterns.”₉

(You can watch a video interview about The Field with Drs. Hagelin and Wolf from What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole by clicking here.)

The problem is no one can prove that The Field exists. You can’t see it; you can’t photograph it; you can’t measure it; you can’t hold it in your hand. But when quantum physicists assume The Field is there, they can make incredibly accurate mathematical predictions about the physical universe and how it behaves, which they can’t do without taking The Field into account. As Fred Alan Wolf said, “We can’t explain what we do see as matter…unless we picture that these matter particles somehow come out from or emerge from these thought-wave patterns.”

Think of it as electricity. You can’t see electricity itself; you can only see what electricity produces. One American comedian joked that he wouldn’t pay his electric bill until the company showed him the electricity he was paying for.

But we can see the light electricity makes, and the power, and the other effects we count on every day and now take so much for granted; and when we see those effects, we know electricity must exist.

The same thing is true for The Field. Even though we can’t prove it exists scientifically, nothing makes sense without it in light of the results of the most recent experiments.

Another example might help make this clearer….

If you were an Aborigine living in the Outback of Australia with no contact with the outside world, and someone brought you a radio, you might wonder how it works when you hear music coming out of the box. You might even take it apart, looking for an orchestra of very little people inside playing the music you hear. But after a while, you’d realize the only way to explain the music is to assume there are invisible radio waves in the air, and this box simply captures those waves and translates them into sound – even though you couldn’t prove it.

We have finally reached the point of human understanding – now supported by scientific evidence – that there are waves all around us. But this time they’re not radio waves, they’re not ocean waves; they’re waves of The Field. They’re waves of potentiality; and when they are “observed,” they turn into the physical universe we see.

I’ll talk a lot more about this concept in later chapters. For now it is enough to know The Field must exist, it is outside of space and time, and it includes an infinite number of possibilities, but only in wave form. This field does not contain particles; it is not matter; it is not part of the physical universe. Instead it is what the entire universe is made from – from these waves of possibilities.

But how did this Field come into existence? Who made it? Where did it come from?

Science has no answer for these questions. They only know The Field must exist. So I will not speculate about how The Field was created, or who might have created it, or how it already contains all possibilities, because… well, simply because there is absolutely no way a Human Adult can understand or have a direct experience of anything that happens on the other side of The Field. This will also become clearer in later chapters.

The next question we can ask, though, is: How is “physical reality” created from this Field?

FOOTNOTES

1. Goswami, Amit, Ph.D., theoretical nuclear physicist. What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole – Back to reading

2. Talbot, Michael. The Holographic Universe, p. 34 – Back to reading

3. Ibid. – Back to reading

4. Wolf, Fred Alan, Ph.D., theoretical physicist. What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole – Back to reading

5. Herbert, Nick. “How Large is Starlight: A Brief Look at Quantum Reality,” Revision 10, no. 1 (Summer 1987), pp. 31-35 – Back to reading

6. Ibid. – Back to reading

7. McTaggert, Lynne. The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe, p. xxi. – Back to reading

8. Hagelin, John, Ph.D., Physics Professor, Maharishi University. What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole – Back to reading

9. Wolf, Fred Alan. Id. – Back to reading

CHAPTER 6

THE HOLOGRAM

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How is “reality” created from The Field?

Most quantum physicists agree it is a very similar process to the creation of a hologram. In other words, the universe we see is a “holographic universe.”

“When we look at some of the scientific views of ‘reality’ that have tried to get down, down, down to the nitty-gritty, we see at its ultimate level… that reality is not solid – it’s mostly empty space – and whatever solidity it has seems more to resemble a hologram picture rather than material, harsh, solid reality.”₁

“University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes… that despite its apparent solidity, the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.”₂

Let’s back up for a minute….

Quantum Physics is actually a science of mathematics, and it is the most accurate mathematical science to date to explain what we see in our “reality.”

“Quantum mathematics – which is, in our belief, the most fundamental mathematics, the most accurate mathematical description of nature that we have discovered – this mathematics shows us clearly that the movements of objects are describable only in terms of possibilities, not the actual events that happen in our experience.”₃

The mathematics used in quantum physics to “describe nature” and explain the behavior we see in our “reality” is also the same mathematics used to create a hologram. This is why quantum physicists say the universe seems to be more like a hologram than solid reality.

So, to understand the “holographic universe,” we have to understand how a hologram is created. But first, a very brief background….

Holography was invented by a Hungarian physicist, Dennis Gabor, for which he received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1971. But it was not until the laser was invented in 1960 that holography became workable and practicable. Today it is used for many things, including credit cards and product packaging.

There are actually three different kinds of holograms, some using lasers and others using white light. But let’s talk about the basic laser process for creating a hologram, in simplified form.

The first thing to understand about creating a hologram is that it is a two-step process.

The first step is that you shoot a laser beam out of a gun, and then immediately split it into two beams. One half of the original beam (called the “reference beam”) is directed toward a special holographic film (or plate). The other half of the original beam hits and bounces off an object, and then goes to the same piece of holographic film.

At this point, what you’ve got is a holographic image (a pattern) on the holographic film; but you can’t see the image of the object. If you look at the film, all you can see is a bunch of nothing – indiscernible waves.

You may remember a craze in the 1990’s about so-called “3-D pictures.” These were pictures where, if you looked at them normally, all you could see was… nothing, really. Just a bunch of wavy lines.

Looking at the original image on a piece of holographic film after Step 1 is very similar. You really can’t see anything.

But now let’s do Step 2. If you take the reference beam from Step 1 and shine it on the holographic film again….

…out pops the object from Step 1. This would be the equivalent of changing your focus to have the 3-D picture pop out as a discernible image.

Now, the most interesting thing about this holographic image of an apple that pops out in Step 2 is that it looks very real and very solid – so real that your mouth can water, and you want to pick it up and take a bite. But if you try to pick it up, your hand will go right through it, since there’s nothing there.

“Creating the illusion that things are located where they are NOT is the quintessential feature of a hologram…. If you look at a hologram, it seems to have extension in space, but if you pass your hand through it, you will find there is nothing there…. Despite what your senses tell you, no instrument will pick up any energy or substance where the hologram appears to be hovering. This is because a hologram is a virtual image, an image that appears to be where it is not.”₄

So how can quantum physics say we live in a holographic universe? That doesn’t make any sense. What we see and touch looks and feels very real and very solid. We can reach out and grab and eat the apple we see in front of us; so how can it be a hologram? We also don’t fall through the floor; nor can we walk through walls (well… the vast majority of us can’t).

The first answer is to say that many quantum physicists doesn’t actually say our physical reality is a hologram; it says it acts like a hologram, since the mathematics used to explain both is the same.

But more and more scientists are now going further and suggesting we do, indeed, live in a hologram, based on the most recent experiments. For example, in 2008 Craig Hogan, director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, said, “If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”₅

“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.”₆

And according to Dr. Jacob Bekenstein, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “An astonishing theory called the holographic principle holds that the universe is like a hologram…. The physics of black holes – immensely dense concentrations of mass – provides a hint that the principle might be true.”₇

So at this point I would simply ask you to suspend all judgment and consider the possibility we live in a holographic universe, as the scientific results of quantum physics suggest. You don’t have to “believe” this forever; just try it out as an experiment. I admit this is a radical way of thinking; but after all we’ve been through trying to find “the truth” – most of which didn’t work very well – maybe it’s time to get a little more radical.

“It is relatively easy to understand this idea of holism in something that is external to us, like an apple in a hologram. What makes this difficult is that we are not looking at the hologram; we are part of the hologram.”₈

* * *

If we look around carefully and pay attention, there are “clues,” or “hints,” we’re being given all the time about how this universe actually works. I’m going to mention a few of those hints over the course of this book, and I’m going to be suggesting some Hollywood movies for you to rent and watch. Now you might say, “That’s all just fiction; it’s just a movie;” and you would be right. But fiction and movies can also give us hints about what is really going on.

Especially science fiction. When I was young there was a comic book called Dick Tracy, and Dick had this really incredible wrist-watch-two-way-radio-thingy. I say “incredible” because in the 1950’s it was pure science fiction. Today it’s a reality.₉ I could – and you could – list hundreds of things in the field of technology, for example, first mentioned in some artistic medium that have come true in the last few decades, not the least of which are George Orwell’s 1984 and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged – unfortunately.

So there are two short videos on YouTube I want you to watch to get a better idea what this whole holographic concept is about, and how real a hologram can seem.

One is a scene from the movie, The Thirteenth Floor. In this movie, a German scientist figured out how to create a full-blown hologram that one can become part of, like a total immersion movie. But the scientist gets murdered, and his friend and partner (Douglas Hall) wants to find out who did it. So Douglas gets in the “hologram machine” and enters into a hologram of Los Angeles in 1937 where the scientist had left him a clue about his murder.

The scene you will watch is Douglas’ first time in the hologram machine. Please note how he reacts to being in a hologram and his astonishment at how real it looks and feels to him.

Click here to watch the video.

The second video clip is from Star Trek: The Next Generation (Episode 16, 11001001). Since the Starship Enterprise was traveling around the universe all the time, they had to figure out how to make it possible for the crew to take a vacation. So they created the Holodeck – a room where any hologram could be requested and created for their relaxation and enjoyment.

The scene you will watch is Commander Riker asking to spend time in New Orleans playing some jazz, with a very interesting audience. Again, notice how surprised he is that the woman looks and feels and smells so real.

Click here to watch the video.

But if all of this is possible, the question then arises: How is our holographic universe created for us to experience as the physical universe?

FOOTNOTES

1. Ledwith, Miceal, Ph.D., Professor of Systematic Theology, Maynooth College, Ireland. What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole – Back to reading

2. Talbot, Michael. An essay also entitled The Holographic Universe – Back to reading

3. Goswami, Amit, What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole – Back to reading

4. Talbot, Michael. The Holographic Universe, p. 25 – Back to reading

5. Chown, Marcus. Our world may be a giant hologram, New Scientist, January 15, 2009 – Back to reading

6. Ibid. – Back to reading

7. Bekenstein, Jacob, D., Ph.D., Professor of Theoeretical Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Information in the Holographic Universe, Scientific American, August 2003 – Back to reading

8. Talbot, Michael. Id., pp. 46, 55. – Back to reading

9. Sutter, John. HP developing a 'Dick Tracy' wristwatch, CNN, June 3, 2010 – Back to reading

CHAPTER 7

THERE IS NO “OUT THERE” OUT THERE

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Dr. Karl Pribram has had a long and illustrious career. Born in Austria in 1919, Pribram is both a neurosurgeon and a neurophysiologist who spent many years trying to find out where memories are stored in the brain.

The problem was that in the 1920’s a brain scientist by the name of Karl Lashley had found “no matter what portion of a rat’s brain he removed, he was unable to eradicate its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery.”₁ So Pribram set out to solve the mystery of memory storage that seemed independent of brain cells (neurons).

But it wasn’t until he met David Bohm, one of the pioneers in quantum physics, that Pribram found his answer. “Bohm helped establish the foundation for Pribram’s theory that the brain operates in a manner similar to a hologram, in accordance with quantum mathematical principles and the characteristics of wave patterns.”₂

Technically, “Pribram believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of film containing a holographic image. In other words, Pribram believes the brain is itself a hologram.”₃

Memory storage is not the only thing that becomes more understandable in light of Pribram’s theory.

“Another is how the brain is able to translate the avalanche of frequencies it receives via the senses (light frequencies, sound frequencies, etc.) into the concrete world of our perceptions. Encoding and decoding frequencies is precisely what a hologram does best. Just as a hologram functions as a sort of lens, a translating device able to convert an apparently meaningless blur of frequencies into a coherent image, Pribram believes the brain also comprises a lens and uses holographic principles to mathematically convert the frequencies it receives through the senses into the inner world of our perceptions.”₄

In short, Pribram believes “our brains mathematically construct ‘hard’ reality by relying on input from a frequency domain.”₅

Okay. Let’s translate all of this into simple English. According to Karl Pribram and the results of many scientific experiments, the human brain itself is a hologram. Its function is to receive holographic wave frequencies and translate them into the physical universe we see “out there.”

And now the fun begins….

I want to talk about two specific scientific experiments – out of many – that not only seem to prove Pribram’s theory, but go beyond it to an amazing conclusion.

The first began in the 1970’s with a researcher in the physiology department of the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Benjamin Libet. Put very simply, Libet would experiment with brain surgery patients during their operations. The patients’ brains were exposed and they were fully conscious, having received only local anesthetic.

Libet would, for example, stimulate the patients’ little finger on one hand (like a pin prick) and ask the patients to tell him when they felt it. Then he would stimulate the area of the brain associated with that little finger, and ask the patients to tell him when they felt that as well.

Before I tell you what he discovered, we need to understand how we feel things, like a pin prick. The stimulus (pin prick) is transmitted from the location on the body where it happened to the brain, and then the brain lets us know about the sensation. Technically, we don’t actually “feel” things where they happen; we “feel” them in the brain.

So it would make sense that if you stimulate someone’s little finger, it would take time (fractions of a second) for the nerves to move that sensation to the brain where it would be “felt,” since the physical body is limited by space and time and nothing in the physical universe (according to Einstein) can travel faster than the speed of light. Basically, it would take time for a stimulus on the little finger to get to the brain and for the person to then become “aware” of it.

On the other hand, it would also make sense that if you stimulated the brain directly at the exact location where the little finger sends the sensation to be “felt,” the person would be “aware” of it immediately. In other words, there would be no time delay since the brain already has the information about the stimulus and only needs to alert the person to the sensation.

What Libet found, and others after him, was that the exact opposite was true. In fact, you will probably read many times in this book that the information we’re getting from the scientific research in quantum physics is proving that the opposite of a lot of what we have always believed is true.

Libet’s patients would tell him instantly (no time delay) when he stimulated their little finger, and yet there was a delay when he stimulated the brain directly.

Libet was flabbergasted. He tried to find an explanation, as did many other scientists; and the prevailing theory became that time can travel backwards. It’s called the “time reversal theory,” or “subjective backward referral,” or “antedating.” However, after trying to prove this and failing, Libet himself later said “there appeared to be no neural mechanism that could be viewed as directly mediating or accounting for the subjective sensory referrals backward in time.”₆ In other words, there is no evidence in the brain for time reversal as the explanation for this phenomenon.

For now, just file that information away and let’s talk about another experiment….

This one started in the 1990’s conducted by Dr. Dean Radin and other colleagues. Dean Radin is a Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, on the Adjunct Faculty at Sonoma State University, and part of the Distinguished Consulting Faculty at Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center. He earned an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and both a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He worked at AT&T Bell Labs and GTE Labs, mainly on human factors of advanced telecommunications products and services, and then held appointments at Princeton University, Edinburgh University, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, SRI International, Interval Research Corporation, and the Boundary Institute.

I say all that because Radin’s research is admittedly not widely accepted by the mainstream scientific community, which is why you may have never heard of it, although his credentials are beyond question. Here’s why his results are so hard for some scientists to swallow….

Radin would hook a person up to various machines to measure a number of different bodily responses, such as heart rate, EKG, skin conductants, the amount of blood in the fingertip, and respiration.

The person then sits in front of a computer screen with a button in their hand. They’re told to press the button whenever they’re ready, and five seconds later the computer will randomly select a picture and display it on the screen.

There are two different types of pictures the computer can choose from. One group of pictures will evoke an emotional response in normal people – like a picture of violence, or war, or rape, or ugliness, or the Twin Towers coming down on 9/11. The other group of pictures are designed to be neutral, to normally not have any emotional impact when viewed, like a scene of a city street in Anytown.

We already know what happens in the body when people see an emotional image – what happens to their heart rate, to their EKG, skin conductants, the amount of blood in the fingertip, and respiration. They “spike.”

We also know what happens in the body when people see a neutral (non-emotional) image. They remain “calm.”

When the person in this experiment pushes the button, the computer has not yet chosen which picture to display, or from which group, and will not make that decision until five seconds later when it immediately puts the picture on the screen.

Now here’s the amazing thing: The person’s bodily responses being measured would occur before the computer chose the picture and displayed it on the screen. In other words, the person’s heart rate, EKG, skin conductants, the amount of blood in the fingertip, and respiration would all spike prior to the picture coming up if the picture were an emotional picture, and the bodily responses would all remain calm if the picture about to appear would be neutral.

To repeat, all of these bodily responses (or lack of bodily responses) would occur before the computer had even chosen which picture to put on the screen. The only conclusion that makes any sense is that the brain knows what picture is coming before the person is aware of it – indeed, before the computer has even chosen which picture to display – and the body is responding accordingly!₇

“There have been other studies that have shown that when people are beginning to move a hand, or beginning to say something, there is actually activity in certain nerve cells of the brain even before they become consciously aware of what they’re trying to do.”₈

What does all this mean?

Before I answer that question, I have to introduce one last scientific concept called “Occam’s Razor,”₉ a principle that’s been hanging around for almost seven-hundred years. It is often paraphrased as, “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best,” although that’s technically not the correct interpretation of Occam’s Razor. It is also called the “scientific principle of parsimony,” which is a “preference for the least complex explanation for an observation.”₁₀ The general rule is that the best answer requires the least number of assumptions and postulates the fewest entities.

There have been many different attempts to explain the results of these brain experiments, by as many different scientists. But the simplest and most logical explanation – the one that seems to satisfy Occam’s Razor the best – is that the brain knows what is going to happen before it happens “out there” in the physical universe. The sequence, apparently, is that the brain receives holographic wave information, and then sends it “out there,” creating a physical universe for the person to perceive and experience.

For example, in the Libet experiments, the brain “knew” the little finger was going to be stimulated before the actual stimulation took place, and therefore there was no time delay for the person to become aware of it. However, when the brain was stimulated directly – as if a new hologram was being downloaded to it – it took time for the brain to send the sensation out to the little finger and bring it back to the brain to be perceived.

In Radin’s experiments, the only thing that makes sense is that the brain knew what picture would appear because it was creating the reality that was about to happen, not simply responding to a reality after it happened.

Let me repeat that, because it is so critical to understanding how the Holographic Universe works…. the brain knew what picture would appear because it was creating the reality that was about to happen, not simply responding to a reality after it happened.

So let’s put this together with Pribram’s holographic brain model….

Pribram says the human brain is itself a hologram, and it will “mathematically construct ‘hard’ reality by relying on input from a frequency domain.”

Remember The Field? The Field is Pribram’s “frequency domain” – an infinite number of possibilities existing as waves of frequencies.

So Pribram is saying the brain receives wave frequencies from The Field, which it then translates into “’hard’ reality” – what we normally call the physical universe. In fact, all these experiments suggest your brain receives a hologram in wave frequencies from The Field, collapses the wave function and converts them into particles to create physical “reality,” and then sends that “reality” “out there” for you to experience.

It means, first of all, the human brain is the “observer” that “collapses the wave function” that I talked about in Chapter Five, since quantum physics says it is the “observer” that changes an electron from a wave into a particle.

Put more simply, it’s the brain that takes those wavy 3-D pictures….

…and converts them into something we can see.

(actually hidden in the 3-D picture above,

from MagicEye.com)

It also means our senses – seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, etc. – are not really sensing some independent “reality” “out there,” but in fact are projecting that reality so it appears to be “out there.” In addition to being “receivers,” then, our eyes are “projectors,” since your brain knows what you are about to experience before you perceive it with your senses.

Apparently, once our brain converts the wave frequencies from The Field, it projects them “out there” and makes it appear we are surrounded by a “total immersion movie.” Then, and only then, our senses “read” what has been projected “out there” and bring that information back to the brain.

“David Bohm had suggested that were we to view the cosmos without the lenses that outfit our telescopes, the universe would appear to us as a hologram. Pribram extended this insight by noting that were we deprived of the lenses of our eyes and the lens-like processes of our other sensory receptors, we would be immersed in holographic experiences.”₁₁

I don’t think anyone knows exactly how this works right now, but I feel confident as the research in quantum physics continues, someone will discover the process.

Meanwhile, we have been given a big clue – one of those “hints” I talked about in the last chapter – in the form of the modern computer….

Most computers currently use what is called “binary code,” which is made up of nothing but zero’s and one’s.₁₂ If you look at the zero’s and one’s themselves, they look random and chaotic, like the 3-D pictures.

But inside every computer is a CPU – a Central Processing Unit – that acts as the “brain” of the computer. This CPU receives the binary code in sequences of zero’s and one’s, translates that binary code, and projects the results onto a computer screen where we can see it in a form that makes sense to us.

A computer also has its own sensory perceptions, which include things like a mouse, a touch screen, a microphone, a video camera, etc. When we interact with the computer through one of its senses – like clicking the mouse – that message gets sent back to the CPU for further processing.

Therefore, in the same way a computer’s CPU receives its binary code, translates it, projects the results onto a screen, and then processes the inputs that come back through the mouse and other sensory perceptions, our human brain receives wave frequencies from The Field, translates them into particles by collapsing the wave function, projects the results “out there,” and then processes the inputs that come back through our own sensory perceptions.

I invite you to try an experiment yourself. Go outside, or just look around wherever you are, and imagine for a moment you are not looking at some independent or objective reality “out there,” but you are projecting that reality “out there” much in the same way a projector puts a movie onto the theater screen.

“If the holographic brain model is taken to its logical conclusions, it opens the door on the possibility that objective reality – the world of coffee cups, mountain vistas, elm trees, and table lamps – might not even exist…. Is it possible that what is ‘out there’ is really a vast, resonating symphony of wave forms, a ‘frequency domain’ that is transformed into the world as we know it only after it enters our brain?”₁₃

David Bohm said “the tangible reality of our everyday lives is really a kind of illusion, like a holographic image. Underlying it is a deeper order of existence, a vast and more primary level of reality that gives birth to all the objects and appearances of our physical world in much the same way that a piece of holographic film gives birth to a hologram.”₁₄

“If the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality, and what is ‘out there’ is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only processes some of the frequencies out of this blur, what becomes of objective reality? Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. Although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this is an illusion. We are really ‘receivers’ floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency.”₁₅

In other words, as Fred Alan Wolf and Lynne McTaggert both say, “there is no ‘out there’ out there, independent of what is going on ‘in here.’”₁₆ (Watch a video of them from What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole by clicking here.)

“What is ‘out there,’” says Michael Talbot, “is a vast ocean of waves and frequencies, and reality looks concrete to us only because our brains are able to take this holographic blur and convert it into the sticks and stones and other familiar objects that make up our world.”₁₇

“What is real? How do you define ‘real?’ If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

- Morpheus, from The Matrix

* * *

Time to sum all of this up in a nice neat little paragraph…

What we have always thought of as our life, our reality, is not real – according to quantum physics – but actually a holographic 3D movie we have been immersed in, whose wave frequencies have been downloaded from The Field to our brain, where they are translated into particles located in space and time and projected “out there” for us to perceive through our senses.

What this means is that there is no independent, objective reality “out there,” but a wholly subjective reality created totally dependent on what’s “in here.”

In short, there is no “out there” out there.

“There is evidence to suggest that our world and everything in it – from snowflakes to maple trees to falling stars and spinning electrons – are only ghostly images, projections from a level of reality so beyond our own that it is literally beyond both space and time.”₁₈

Even Einstein is reported to have said, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

“This is the only radical thinking that you need to do. But it is so radical, it is so difficult, because our tendency is that the world is already ‘out there,’ independent of my experience. It is not. Quantum Physics has been so clear about it.”₁₉

* * *

MOVIE SUGGESTION: The Thirteenth Floor, starring Craig Bierko (1999)

FOOTNOTES

1. Talbot, Michael. An essay also entitled The Holographic Universe – Back to reading

2. Wikipedia – David Bohm – Back to reading

3. Talbot, Michael. Id. – Back to reading

4. Ibid. – Back to reading

5. Ibid. – Back to reading

6. Libet, Benjamin. Mind time: The temporal factor in consciousness – Back to reading

7. Radin, Dean. The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena – Back to reading

8. Newberg, Andrew, Ph.D., Director, Center for Spirituality and the Neurosciences, University of Pennsylvania, What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole – Back to reading

9. Wikipedia – Occam’s Razor – Back to reading

10. Wikipedia – Parsimony – Back to reading

11. Wikipedia – Karl Pribram – Back to reading

12. Wikipedia – Binary Code – Back to reading

13. Talbot, Michael. The Holographic Universe, p. 31 – Back to reading

14. Ibid., p. 54 – Back to reading

15. Talbot, Michael. An essay entitled The Universe as a Hologram: Does Objective Reality Exist, or is the Universe a Phantasm? – Back to reading

16. Wolf, Fred Alan and McTaggert, Lynne, What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole – Back to reading

17. Talbot, Michael. The Holographic Universe, p. 54 – Back to reading

18. Ibid., p.1 – Back to reading

19. Goswami, Amit. What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole – Back to reading

CHAPTER 8

THE BREAKOUT

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As I walked out of the Library into the back of the movie theater again, I looked up at the black ball hanging from the center of the ceiling with its bright lights streaming toward the wrap-around IMAX screens.

Finally, I knew with certainty what the ball was. It was projecting the images of the 3D movies onto the screens, creating the holograms we are all part of, totally immersing us, making them appear to be our lives, our reality.

In fact, Pribram said that black ball was a human brain – my human brain – and the movies it produced were not real at all. According to quantum physics, nothing is “real,” as we have always understood that word – not just the shadows on the wall of Plato’s Cave, but also the fire and the men on the walkway that produce the shadows, and the Cave itself as well. It’s all a hologram, popping in and out of existence as I observe it; and by definition, a hologram is not real.

But all of this brought up a lot more questions than it answered....

~ Who or what is creating the holographic movies I’m experiencing as my reality?

~ If the movies I’ve been watching and thinking were my life aren’t real (along with the movie theater itself), then what is real?

~ Why do the movies seem to contain so much drama and conflict and pain and suffering, both internal and external?

~ What does it all mean in the end?

And perhaps even more importantly, in light of the discoveries in quantum physics, I had to rethink all my previous answers to the questions:

~ Who am I, really?

~ Where did I come from?

~ How did I get here?

~ What am I doing here?

I stood there staring at the black ball hanging from the ceiling as if it would suddenly and magically speak and give me the answers I needed.

* * *

I was about to turn sixty-two years of age, sitting in my apartment one day when I realized…

~ I had no job. I had responded to a few want ads that would have been perfect for me, but no one wanted to hire me.

~ I had no money and didn’t know how I was going to pay the next month’s rent.

~ I had no relationship, no one to love, no female who wanted to be part of my life in an intimate way.

~ I had two marriages, both of which failed after 15+ years because of my own issues.

~ Although I had a few close friends, none of them lived within a thousand miles of me at the time.

~ I had a wonderful family, including three fantastic grandchildren; but other than my daughter and her husband, I hardly got to see them.

~ I had written two books about AIDS and HIV no one was buying and apparently no one wanted to read.

~ I had no future plans, no idea how anything would change.

…and I thought to myself, “My life couldn’t get any more….” The word I used, if I recall correctly, started with an "F."

But as I sat in the apartment that day taking stock of my life and realizing how limited it had become, I did not feel any depression, any regret, any sadness or loneliness at all. It wasn’t apathy or resignation, either. The “F” word was just a habit with no emotion behind it. Instead, it was a moment devoid of all judgment or resistance to my situation – a moment as if I were suspended in time and looking at myself from afar, a moment in which I completely surrendered to "what is" without any desire or need to change it.

If I had any reaction at all, it was more like, “Oh. So that’s the way things are;” and what I felt the most was gratitude for still having a roof over my head and enough food to eat.

* * *

When it wouldn’t speak to me, my eyes finally left the black ball and came to rest on the door at the back of the theater, the one with the sign saying, “Do Not Enter – Extremely Dangerous.”

I knew the answers I wanted – I needed – were not going to be found inside the movie theater, or in any group, or in the Library.

I knew my life had reached a turning point, perhaps like an alcoholic or drug addict who hits bottom and takes an honest and dispassionate look at his life.

I knew I was tired of fighting, joining this group and then that one, trying to make things happen, working hard to make things go right, only to end up here. I had been there, done that, and brought home both the t-shirt and the hat, neither of which fit.

I could feel something inside me literally pushing me toward that door, almost as if I had no other option. There was nothing left in the movie theater for me, so why should I stay when there was somewhere else to go I had never been, and staying here made no sense at all.

It was with both fear and excitement that I walked toward the door, opened it, and went through.

* * *

The rest of this book will be my written report to you as your “scout” of what I found on the other side of the door.

At this point I want to repeat and expand on something I said in the Introduction. I am not writing this book to try to talk you into anything. I am merely passing on information I have discovered during my own journey. Whether you believe that information or not is none of my business or concern, and I am not interested in convincing you I am right. If at any time it sounds like I am arguing a point to try to get you to believe it, rest assured that is not the case. My only job, as I see it, is to try to pass on the information as clearly and completely as possible, and sometimes that isn’t easy. I will often go to great lengths to make sure I have expressed the information in a way you can at least understand what I am saying, whether you agree with it or not.

I also promised you in the Introduction I would let you know when we reach the place in the book where you can only go on and not back.

We’re there.

Of course, you can keep reading the rest of the book out of pure curiosity, maintaining some distance, not getting too involved, never going through the door, not reading as if the book were about you and your own spiritual evolution. There’s no danger in that. Do whatever you want, and remember you can never do anything “wrong.”

But I have to warn you, if you keep reading, the information is going to make its way into your mind and will stay there forever. You can do your best to ignore it and return to your life as a Human Adult inside the movie theater, but eventually it will begin to have its impact, maybe a little bit at a time. That’s fine, too. I suggest, however, if you really don’t want to let this affect your life in any way, you stop reading now, put the book down, and walk away. This book will always be there in the Library in the movie theater, if and when you decide you want to pick it up again.

All but a few Human Adults spend the rest of their lives in the back of the movie theater belonging to some group; and they die there as well. Most have no idea there’s an alternative, so no one can blame them. Besides, the sign on the door says, “Do Not Enter,” and Human Adults have a tendency to respect authority. The sign also says, “Extremely Dangerous,” and most Human Adults are still controlled by their fears.

But maybe you’re not one of them, and now you know there is an alternative.

* * *

I want to give you as much information as I can for you to make a decision about how you want to proceed; and at this point I’m going to introduce a new metaphor, apparently a fairly common one….

“The complete metamorphosis of a butterfly has been used as a metaphor for eternal life, as the ‘earth-bound’ caterpillar transforms into the ‘ethereal butterfly’,” says the New World Encyclopedia.₁

I said before that the Universe provides many hints and clues in plain sight for us to see and understand when we’re ready. The butterfly metamorphosis is one of them, so it doesn’t surprise me that various writers have picked up on it from time to time.

Once again, however, their metaphor is wrong because it’s based on a faulty premise.

The metaphor of metamorphosis has nothing to do with “eternal life.” It has everything to do with becoming a butterfly in the here and now.

Let’s first understand that “metamorphosis” is actually the whole series of changes an insect undergoes from egg to adult. Metamorphosis commonly has four stages, which we can easily equate to our discussions about the movie theater…

Stage One: The embryo or egg, i.e., the Human Child

Stage Two: The larva, i.e., the Human Adult

Stage Three: The pupa, i.e., what comes after “the door”

Stage Four: The adult or imago, i.e., the so-called “spiritually enlightened”

What we’re talking about at the moment is going from Stage Two, a Human Adult, into Stage Three, the pupa. That’s precisely what happens if you walk through the door at the back of the theater.

In insect metamorphosis, the pupa stage is when the caterpillar transforms into its adult form (the imago).

“It is during the time of pupation that the adult structures of the insect are formed while the larval structures are broken down. Pupae are inactive, and usually sessile (not able to move about). They have a hard protective coating and often use camouflage to evade potential predators.”₂

This “hard protective coating” takes different forms in different insects, but is most commonly known as a “cocoon.”

Technically, most butterflies do not have a “cocoon.” Instead, they have a “chrysalis.” A “cocoon” is a silk casing spun by a caterpillar which totally encloses them during their transformation into a moth, for example. A “chrysalis” is created when a caterpillar that will become a butterfly sheds its outer layer of skin, leaving a hard shell hanging from a leaf or twig in which it is encased for the transformation.

But I’m going to take some literary license here and from now on use the word “cocoon” rather than “chrysalis” in my butterfly metamorphosis metaphor. After all, it’s just a metaphor, and “cocoon” is a lot easier to type and pronounce, and much more commonly understood.

So… if you decide to walk through the door in the back of the theater, you will be leaving Stage Two and entering Stage Three, stepping into a cocoon; and one of the reasons I like this metaphor so much is that there are many similarities between a caterpillar cocoon and what’s on the other side of the door. Here’s what you can expect, should you take this step….

A cocoon is small and confining and desolate and lonely and dark, and it means the death of the caterpillar; and that’s exactly where you will find yourself. Know right now that you will not be walking into the blinding white light of eternal bliss. Instead, things will look pretty much the same as they always have in the first few days; it will take you some time to realize just how different they are, as you begin what has been referred to (but ultimately misunderstood) by various religions inside the movie theater as the “dark night of the soul.”

“’Dark night of the soul’ is used to describe a phase in a person's spiritual life, marked by a sense of loneliness and desolation…. It is referenced by spiritual traditions throughout the world..... The term ‘dark night (of the soul)’ is used in Christianity for a spiritual crisis in a journey towards union with God…. Typically for a believer in the dark night of the soul, spiritual disciplines (such as prayer and consistent devotion to God) suddenly seem to lose all their experiential value; traditional prayer is extremely difficult and unrewarding for an extended period of time…. The individual may feel as though God has suddenly abandoned them or that his or her prayer life has collapsed…. Rather than resulting in devastation, however, the dark night is perceived by mystics and others to be a blessing in disguise, whereby the individual is stripped of the spiritual ecstasy associated with acts of virtue. Although the individual may for a time seem to outwardly decline in their practices of virtue, they in reality become more virtuous, as they are being virtuous less for the spiritual rewards obtained and more out of a true love for God.”₃

Let’s just say in your cocoon on the other side of the door, you will experience situations that will challenge every single belief, theory, opinion, judgment, and attitude you ever had and held sacred; and none of your prior training in any spiritual philosophy or self-help technique will do you the slightest bit of good.

For example, spiritual philosophies or self-help practices designed to alter your state of consciousness, such as meditation and breathing techniques and dream analysis, are the last thing you will want to do inside your cocoon, because you need to be in full and conscious control of all the faculties of your mind. (I’m not saying you will “think” your way into being a butterfly, but you’ll quickly learn that any technique or practice you may have learned in the back of the movie theater that involved closing your eyes was actually leading you in the exact opposite direction of where you wanted to go. Everything you will need to become a butterfly will appear right there in front of you, and you’ll want to be wide awake and fully focused on the here and now.)

“Just hypothetically, what if you found out that in order to achieve the enlightenment you speak of, you had to reject all the teachings you’ve ever received. Could you abandon all this knowledge you’ve acquired?”₄

How “dark” will this “dark night” be? That depends on you. All I can say right now is that the intensity of the “darkness” will depend on how resistant you are to letting go and dying, in the same way a caterpillar could make his transformation a living hell if he fought it inside the cocoon.

What else can you expect if you walk through the door? To be totally alone. Every caterpillar has its own cocoon, and so will you. That doesn’t mean you have to disconnect from family or friends and go off in the woods somewhere by yourself, although some have; but your family and friends will not be able to help you, nor will they understand what you’re doing or why. Only those who have gone before you – the scouts – will have any idea what you’re going through, and contact with them only happens rarely while you’re in the cocoon. It means there will be no group to support or comfort you like there was in the back of the movie theater; you’re on your own.

Will the movies you’ve been watching in the theater change? Not really, not that much in the beginning; but there is definitely a change in their purpose, from leading you into more limitation in the movie theater to giving you the opportunity to eventually break out of your cocoon as a butterfly. You’ll have to read the next part of this book to fully understand that concept.

Perhaps the most disturbing prospect of walking through that door into your cocoon is your certain death. A caterpillar must “die” in order to transform into a butterfly. You, too, must die – that is, the “you” you think of as “you” must die. It is only through this death that you can discover who you really are.

How long will you stay in the cocoon?

“Pupation may be brief, for example 2 weeks as in monarch butterflies, or the pupa may enter dormancy or diapause until the appropriate season for the adult…. Pupation may last weeks, months or even years.”₅

From reports of two other scouts and my own experience, I can say you will probably stay in the cocoon about two to three years. Not all that time will be the “dark night of the soul;” it gets easier as you get closer to the end. But you should be prepared not to emerge as a butterfly any time soon, like next week or next year.

It all sounds like a lot of fun, doesn’t it? Actually, it is, or it can be once you get the hang of it. (No pun intended… a chrysalis hangs from a leaf or… oh, never mind.)

But consider this… if you decide to climb Mount Everest, you should be prepared for a lot of hard training and difficult conditions in order to reach the summit. If you want to be an Olympic swimmer, there’s years of sacrificing a “normal” life and hours a day in the pool and weight room just to try to qualify; and then there’s no guarantee of a medal.

I doubt any good coach or trainer would sugarcoat all the preparation you must go through if you want to achieve such lofty goals. The same is true in this case.

On the other hand, no one attempts to climb Mount Everest or win Olympic Gold or do anything challenging without knowing the end result is worth the effort. That would truly be insane. In this case, what awaits you as a butterfly is constant and true and abiding joy, abundance, power, and love. Well, maybe. I’m still in the last part of my cocoon stage, so I won’t guarantee anything. What I can say from my current position is that I am experiencing all the things I wished for and believed possible while still in the movie theater as a Human Adult: true contentment, peace of mind, more abundance than I could have imagined, total relief from worry and stress, more fun and excitement than I ever dreamed of, with virtually no drama and conflict or pain and suffering, and much more love and appreciation for myself and everyone else and the Universe as a whole.

Plus, I have the answers I needed to my questions; and perhaps more importantly, I have no more doubts.

To me, that alone makes the journey worthwhile, and I’m not yet at the final destination.

* * *

I found it amusing that in his Enlightenment Trilogy, Jed McKenna spent the entire first book telling you all about what it’s like to be “spiritually enlightened,” painting a very wonderful, accurate, and appealing picture. Then in Book Two, he made it very clear how difficult and demanding it is to get there, using examples of Julie’s spiritual autolysis and the travails of Captain Ahab in Moby Dick. But in Book Three Jed seems to go to great lengths to try to convince you not to go there, but to stay in the movie theater as a Human Adult.

“Who wants to be cast permanently adrift on a shoreless sea? Who wants to spend the rest of their life tumbling through infinite space? No one, of course. What’s the point of pointlessness? How can you want nothing?”₆

It’s true. So-called “spiritual enlightenment” is not at all what people have dreamed it to be; and despite what some teachers and gurus have said, it is not something that happens overnight in a blinding flash of light, or as the result of a special meditation session where all of a sudden you commune with God. Getting there is extremely difficult and demanding, but so is reaching the summit of Mt. Everest. Sure, you could stay in Base Camp and enjoy the view and appreciate the beauty and have a fairly decent life. Or you could climb to the top.

Why would anyone do that? Because it’s there, of course; and because you simply cannot not do it. Because there’s something inside you that says you absolutely must go through that door.

For some people the choice is clear and easy. What’s the point of staying inside the movie theater when you know it’s not real and the answers you’re seeking can’t be found there?

For others, the choice can be really tough, especially for younger Human Adults (in chronological age) who have their entire lives ahead of them. I wonder whether it takes a certain amount of time spent in the movie theater before one is ready to consider another option. After all, there’s a lot of fun and enjoyment and pleasure to be found as a Human Adult – limited and restricted though it is – that someone in their twenties or thirties might not be so anxious to miss out on. The thought of leaving your group and ending up totally alone before getting to experience everything the Cave has to offer might not be that appealing.

Of course, it’s also possible the younger ones don’t believe me that the answers they’re seeking can’t be found inside the theater. Perhaps they don’t want to believe me, having just joined a group they think can offer them the constant and abiding joy, abundance, power, and love they’re seeking, and want to give it a go. I’m all for it – give it all you’ve got for as long as you can. Nothing you do will be “wrong;” the door at the back of the theater will always be there.

But I have often thought while writing this book that I could be talking almost exclusively to the Baby Boomers, the former Hippies now in their late 50’s and 60’s who have spent enough time in the back of the theater to fully appreciate its limitations and have virtually nothing to lose by going through the door. We’ll see.

* * *

So, there it is. That’s everything I can think of to help you make your decision.

The door is standing there right there in front of you, unlocked and ready for you to walk through it. (By the way, did I mention that once you walk through, it closes and locks behind you, and you can never change your mind?)

As I said in the beginning, it’s your choice.

* * *

MOVIE SUGGESTION: The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey (1998)

FOOTNOTES

1. New World Encyclopedia – Metamorphosis – Back to reading

2. Wikipedia – Pupa – Back to reading

3. Wikipedia - Dark Night of the Soul – Back to reading

4. McKenna, Jed. The Enlightenment Trilogy – Back to reading

5. Wikipedia – Pupa – Back to reading

6. McKenna, Jed. Id. – Back to reading

PART TWO:

INSIDE THE COCOON

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There is nothing in a caterpillar

that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.

~ R. Buckminster Fuller

PREFACE TO PART TWO

Welcome to your cocoon!

The sound you just heard was the door closing and locking behind you, so let’s not waste any time….

(By the way, what often happens first as you enter your cocoon is that you get a gift from the “Universe,” a little “reward” for taking your first step toward self-realization. This will be different for everyone, so you’ll want to be open and alert and on the lookout; and it helps to express some appreciation – to no one in particular, if you like – when the gift arrives.)

* * *

Before we start there’s an important distinction that must be made between a “belief system” and a “model.”

A model is defined as “a schematic description of a system, theory, or phenomenon that accounts for its known or inferred properties and may be used for further study of its characteristics₁,” and “a systematic description of an object or phenomenon that shares important characteristics with the object or phenomenon. Scientific models can be material, visual, mathematical, or computational and are often used in the construction of scientific theories.”₂

There’s a simpler definition at Answers.com that says “a scientific model is a representation of an object or system. An example of a scientific model would be a diagram of a cell or a map…. even a model rocket!”₃

In other words, a model takes the evidence already at hand – in our case, the results of the scientific experiments in quantum physics and brain research – and develops a theory or representation of how that evidence might be applied if taken to the next level.

A model is designed to be tested and challenged to see how well it performs.

On the other hand, a “belief system” is often formed in contradiction to the evidence at hand, and cannot withstand testing and challenging. In fact, a belief system tries to avoid being tested or challenged at all costs.

The remainder of this book will be talking about models, not belief systems – models that have been tested and found to work.

You are not going to be asked to believe anything. Instead, you are invited and encouraged to test these models for yourself.

All I can say as your scout is that the models I will present worked for me and got me where I am today – standing here looking at the Pacific Ocean, a truly amazing place I am very happy to be.

FOOTNOTES

1. TheFreeDictionary.com – model – Back to reading

2. Science.YourDictionary.com – scientific model – Back to reading

3. Answers.com – what is a scientific model – Back to reading

CHAPTER 9

THE CONSCIOUSNESS MODEL

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Ramana Maharshi taught that you could achieve the stage of butterfly if you simply “Ask yourself again and again, ‘Who am I?’”₁

“The inquiry 'Who am I?' will destroy all other thoughts, and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then, there will arise Self-realization.”₂

That’s much more easily said than done; and like any other teaching in the back of the movie theater, if it worked, there would be a lot of butterflies populating the Earth by now.

So you’re going to take a little different approach that does work. For approximately the next two years in your cocoon, you’re going to focus on answering the question, “Who Am I not?”, along with the question, “What is true?” At least, that’s what worked for me and a few other scouts and got us where we are today.

Basically, before you can find the true answer to “Who Am I?”, you have to strip away all the false answers you’ve collected during your lifetime, especially those you picked up belonging to various groups in the back of the movie theater.

Remember that in order for a caterpillar to transform into a butterfly, it has to first realize it’s not a caterpillar any more.

“It is during the time of pupation that the adult structures of the insect are formed while the larval structures are broken down.”₃

So we’re going to take a closer look at some of the beliefs commonly held around the topic of “Who I Am” and whether they are true or not; and one of the most common that has become very popular among New Age groups is: “You create your own reality.”

But is that true?

First of all, since the New Age apparently never found out that “reality” is actually a holographic image, and not “real” at all, the saying is not true right off the bat. But that’s just a minor error, and I’m very willing to amend their slogan slightly to conform to quantum physics and say, “You create your own holographic universe,” so we can focus on the important issues.

“You create your own holographic universe.”

Is that true?

If so, exactly who is the “you” who is creating your own holographic universe?

Let’s find out by picking up where we left off in our study of quantum physics in the last part. We said…

“What we have always thought of as our life, our reality, is not real – according to quantum physics – but actually a holographic 3D movie we have been immersed in, whose wave frequencies have been downloaded from The Field to our brain, where they are translated into particles located in space and time and projected “out there” for us to perceive through our senses.”

…and the question we asked was, “Who or what is creating the holographic movies I’m experiencing as my reality?”

You’ll remember that a hologram is a two-step process, and in the second step the reference beam is directed toward the holographic plate (or film) containing the object in order to get the object to pop out into “reality.”

What we didn’t discuss yet is that a single piece of holographic film is capable of storing many, many objects, and in fact holography may soon replace other laser-based storage techniques because of its capacity to hold so much information. (“The advantage of this type of data storage is that the volume of the recording media is used instead of just the surface.”₄)

Which object or objects pop out when you direct a reference beam at the film depends on the angle of the reference beam. In other words, you can choose which holographic images to create by using different angles for the reference beam to select the exact wave patterns you want that are stored in the holographic film.

Now let’s apply that to our holographic universe….

Some sort of reference beam – we don’t know what yet – is directed at The Field, which is like a gigantic piece of holographic film that already contains all the wave frequencies required for an infinite number of holograms; and out pops “reality.”

So now we can ask our question even more specifically: Who or what is the reference beam that chooses certain wave frequencies from The Field to create our holographic reality?

The best answer anyone has come up with so far is consciousness. Consciousness is what chooses the precise wave frequencies in The Field and downloads them to a human brain, which then converts them into space/time particles and out pops our “reality.”

Of course, this process is not two-dimensional or linear as portrayed in this picture. A more realistic depiction might be three-dimensional concentric circles, with “reality” in the middle, The Field around it, and consciousness around The Field.

You could think of it like a peach, where the peach pit is “reality,” The Field is the meat of the peach that you eat, and consciousness is the skin. However, we’re stuck with two-dimensional linear pictures right now, at least until this book can be made holographically.

* * *

Consciousness is what chooses the precise wave frequencies in The Field and downloads them to a human brain, which then converts them into space/time particles and out pops our “reality.”

This is where quantum physicists split into two main groups. One group – the “pure” scientists – cannot accept this answer, although it is the most logical and the simplest, and therefore satisfies Occam’s Razor and the principle of parsimony. That’s because consciousness cannot be measured or dealt with in the normal scientific way. Consciousness simply does not lend itself well to mathematical equations or statistical research.

But there are a significant number of quantum physicists who understand that consciousness is not only the best answer, but also the most workable. One of those is Dr. Amit Goswami, in my estimation one of the great thinkers of our time. Dr. Goswami is Professor Emeritus in theoretical physics at the University of Oregon, Senior Scholar in Residence at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and author of eight books on Quantum Physics, including The Self-Aware Universe and Science and Spirituality: A Quantum Integration. Dr. Goswami says:

“Quantum Physics enables us to see directly that we can make sense of the world only if we base the world on consciousness. The world is made of consciousness; the world is consciousness…. Quantum Physics makes this as clear as daylight…. Consciousness must be involved,… and so for the first time, science encounters ‘free will.’ Consciousness is free because there is no mathematical description of the subject in our science; only objects can be described mathematically, and only to the extent that they are possibilities. The question still remains paramount: Who is the ‘chooser?’ And when we see that… we see that there is freedom of choice, and out of that freedom of choice comes our actual experience.”₅

Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, Teaching Fellow in Physics at Yale University, has these thoughts…

“If you put it that there is an intangible world that effects the tangible world of our experience, and if you then say, ‘That’s what quantum mechanics says,’ – and granted, that’s a fair way of trying to put into English something which is very, very difficult to grasp – but it then leads quite naturally to the conclusion that quantum mechanics says that there is a spiritual world that makes this choice, that there is another world that is intangible that effects and influences the physical world. That intangibility, however, is itself the bedrock of physical reality. It may be intangible, but it is – well, we can’t really say what it is or why it’s there – but it is in fact the most fundamental feature of matter.”₆

Fred Alan Wolf, theoretical physicist, puts it this way…

“Quantum Physics says that consciousness is playing a role in the universe. It says that there is a secret underground that seems to be effecting the reality we live in, and that this reality we live is not at all what it appears to be.”₇

And Dr. Andrew Newberg, Director for the Center for Spirituality and the Neurosciences at the University of Pennsylvania, asks…

“Whether or not we’re just living in a big ‘Holodeck’ is a question we don’t necessarily have a good answer for…. It is conceivable that all of this really is just a great illusion…. So what is the relationship between consciousness and material reality – whether or not the material world can actually be derived from a consciousness reality, or whether consciousness itself could even be the fundamental stuff of the universe, so to speak, instead of the ‘cold, dark matter’ or other aspects of matter that physicists have been looking for?… Maybe it has something more to do with consciousness. In that regard, then, we really can think about the universe as being more a state of consciousness… much more so than the material reality that we normally look at.”₈

So a number of highly respected and thoughtful quantum physicists have concluded that consciousness is what chooses the exact wave frequencies from The Field it wants to use to create our holographic experiences.

However, just like The Field, no one can prove consciousness exists. But also like The Field, when we assume “consciousness must be involved,” as Dr. Goswami says, we can then build a very successful model of how our world works and use that model in very practical and successful every-day applications.

So the statement “You create your own holographic universe” is not true, since the “you” you think of as you, the one on the “reality” side of The Field, is not creating that reality. It might be closer to the truth to say, “Your consciousness creates your own holographic universe.”

But… what exactly is consciousness?

If you would like a good laugh, click here to watch a short video from What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole, where some of the brightest people in the field of quantum physics try to give an answer!

Now, after you’ve stopped laughing, please appreciate the honesty and humility with which all those great minds struggled with the question, because defining consciousness is not easy at all.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines consciousness as “the quality or state of being aware, especially of something within oneself.”₉

In philosophy, “at its most basic level, consciousness may be said to be the process of a thinker focusing the thought on some aspect of existence.”₁₀

“In human beings, consciousness is understood to include ‘meta-awareness,’ an awareness that one is aware.”₁₁

In many spiritual teachings, consciousness is synonymous with the human soul or spirit, the immortal part of a human being; and “higher consciousness – also called super consciousness (Yoga), objective consciousness (Gurdjieff), Buddhic consciousness (Theosophy), God-consciousness (Sufism and Hinduism), Christ consciousness (New Thought), and cosmic consciousness – are expressions used to denote the consciousness of a human being who has reached a higher level of evolutionary development.”₁₂

But, “we may be forced to admit that consciousness, like infinity and the particle-wave concepts in quantum mechanics, is a property that cannot be made intuitively straightforward. Consciousness – like gravity, mass, and charge – may be one of the irreducible properties of the universe for which no further account is possible.”₁₃

If you visit Answers.com and Wikipedia.com and search for consciousness, you will find essay upon essay – dozens of them – from respected researchers trying to explain what consciousness is, all with a little different take on the word.

For me, the last quote is perhaps the most significant and worth repeating…

“Consciousness – like gravity, mass, and charge – may be one of the irreducible properties of the universe for which no further account is possible.”

So I think it’s clear no one really knows exactly what consciousness is or how to properly define it. The truth is we will never know; we only know it must exist. We are, in fact, incapable of knowing, and always will be incapable of knowing, simply because we are on the other side of The Field from consciousness; and our brains – at least according to Pribram – are designed as holographic receivers and translators, and have no capacity or ability to access or process any information on the other side of The Field.

We do know that consciousness is not the body, the brain, the mind, the intellect, or anything else in the holographic universe. It is not a thing; it is the creator of things.

Am I saying that we – the “I” who is writing this book and the “you” who are reading it – have no consciousness? No, I’m saying the word consciousness has been applied to mean a great many things in our holographic universe, and it’s very confusing to then use it to describe what exists on the other side of The Field.

Yes, we – “you” and “I” – have a kind of consciousness, which is self-consciousness. We are aware of our “selves,” and we are aware of being aware; as the dictionary said, “the quality or state of being aware, especially of something within oneself.”

That’s fine, but that’s not the consciousness we’re talking about that chooses wave frequencies from The Field.

Rene Descartes said: “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes lived inside the movie theater like everyone else, and as I mentioned before, in quantum physics we are finding the opposite of what we have always believed is actually closer to the truth: “I am, therefore I think.”

The consciousness we’re now talking about is the “I am;” you and I and our self-consciousness are the “I think.”

* * *

For a long time I hesitated to do this, probably in reaction to the two complete dictionaries of new words and meanings L. Ron Hubbard created for Scientology. I don’t even enjoy reading poetry; I like to read plain and simple English with clear and well-accepted words and meanings.

But because of all this confusion about the word consciousness, and because this concept is so essential to understand on your path to becoming a butterfly, I feel it’s necessary to come up with a new label to properly describe the consciousness on the other side of The Field – this “irreducible property of the universe” – and differentiate it from us on this side of The Field.

I decided quite early I could not use terms like “higher self,” “higher power,” “higher consciousness,” or “expanded self,” since they, too, are so over-used and misunderstood; and frankly, they all take a Human Adult in exactly the opposite direction of where you want to go if you want to become a butterfly. We’ll see why shortly.

Likewise, I didn’t want to use “soul” or “spirit” or anything else with any religious connotation. This isn’t about theology or ascended masters or higher levels of spirituality.

I finally decided on the term, “Infinite I,” which admittedly makes some assumptions, but in the end and for our purposes turns out to be quite useful.

The assumptions are that whatever consciousness exists on the other side of The Field has qualities and attributes that are infinite, such as:

~ infinite joy

~ infinite abundance

~ infinite wisdom

~ infinite power

~ infinite and unconditional love

~ and an infinite desire to play and express itself creatively₁₄

This may or may not turn out to be the “Truth”; perhaps we’ll find out when we die – or not. But for now it’s as close to the truth as we’re going to get, and, like the concept of The Field, provides a very workable model to continue our transformation into a butterfly.

It also serves the purpose of making a clear distinction between the Infinite I on one side of The Field, and “you” and “me” on the other side, walking around in holographic bodies on a holographic Earth. Therefore, the Infinite I is not the “I” who writes these words, and it’s not the “you” who reads them. (I’m going to give another name to that “you” and “I” in the next chapter.)

I also want to emphasize that when I say "Infinite I," I am talking about a single, individual consciousness – not consciousness in general (as the word is sometimes used), or some “collective consciousness,” or “cosmic consciousness,” or “God.” Each of us has an Infinite I. (Perhaps the closest anyone in the movie theater has come to this concept, as far as I can tell, is Jane Roberts in her novels, The Oversoul Seven Trilogy,₁₅ based on the “Seth material.”)

So from now on I will refer to the Infinite I as the one who chooses the precise wave frequencies in The Field and downloads them to a human brain, which then converts them into space/time particles and out pops our “reality.”

Before we go on, I want to be very clear about this Infinite I, because I don’t want any confusion with other concepts you may have developed inside the movie theater.

The Infinite I is not your “higher self” or “expanded self.” There are two things wrong with the term “higher self;” one is the word “higher,” and the other is the word “self.”

First, “higher” has no relevance here. It's a judgment word, a comparison, and we will soon see that judgment is the glue that keeps the illusions together inside the movie theater. The word “self” implies that what we think of as our “self” has a higher version. But what we think of as our “self” is not true – any of it. In fact, where we're headed with all this is toward “no-self.” So the last thing we want to think of in terms of the Infinite I is that it is some expanded version of us. It’s not.

Nor is the Infinite I some “advanced” or “spiritualized” or “ascended” or “purified” or “better” version of you. It is not some “enlightened” or “evolved” or “avatar” or “holy” version of you, either. It is not something you will ever grow into being. You will never “become” your Infinite I, no matter what you do, how “good” you are, how much you meditate or eat only organic food, or pray, or perform certain ceremonies or rituals.

It is not “God,” or “All That Is,” or Allah, or Jehovah, or Yahweh, or “The Source” either.

It is also not your super consciousness, objective consciousness, Buddhic consciousness, God-consciousness, Christ consciousness, universal consciousness, or cosmic consciousness. Those are all movie-theater versions of the truth, and therefore skewed. It is consciousness, yes – your consciousness; but not the consciousness you experience as a human being, which is self-consciousness.

Although you are in constant communication with your Infinite I (whether you realize it or not), you and it exist in entirely different worlds – on different sides of The Field. The best analogy I can think of is an astronaut on the moon, representing “you,” and Mission Control in Houston, representing your Infinite I, with all that space (The Field) in between. I like this analogy because not only did your Infinite I send you to the moon in the first place, but it is also your best friend and partner in this adventure.

But then what is the Infinite I, you ask? Good question.

I don’t know. I know from direct experience of testing and challenging the model that my Infinite I exists, and it created me and your Infinite I created you. I can tell you what it’s not, but I cannot tell you what it is yet; and as I said, I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to tell you what it is, in truth, as long as we are on this side of The Field. The only thing I can say in all my dealings and contacts with my own Infinite I, it is something I would be proud to take home to meet the parents.

* * *

So here is the “Consciousness Model” in a nutshell….

Your Infinite I chooses an experience for you in the form of wave frequencies from an infinite number of possibilities in The Field and downloads them to your brain. Your brain receives those wave frequencies and translates them into physical “reality,” and sends them “out there” for your senses to perceive. You assign power to the holographic universe you perceive to make it "real" and to the persons, places, and things you see.

But this suggests that there is nothing you can see, hear, taste, feel, smell, or experience in any way that your Infinite I has not chosen for you to experience and then sent to your brain to process into “reality.” Every moment of every experience you have now – or have ever had and will ever have – has been carefully chosen and created for you by your Infinite I, exactly the way it is and exactly the way your Infinite I wants it to be, down to the smallest detail. Remember…

THERE IS NO “OUT THERE” OUT THERE!

FOOTNOTES

1. Robert Adams' blog about Sri Ramana Maharshi – Back to reading

2. Mahadevan, T.M.P., in the Introduction to Who Am I?: The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi – Back to reading

3. Wikipedia – Pupa – Back to reading

4. Wikipedia – Holography – Back to reading

5. Goswami, Amit. What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole – Back to reading

6. Wolf, Fred Alan. What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole – Back to reading

7. Newberg, Andrew. What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole – Back to reading

8. Satinover, Jeffrey. What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole – Back to reading

9. Merriam-Webster Dictionary – consciousness – Back to reading

10. Wisegeek.com – consciousness – Back to reading

11. Answers.com – consciousness – Back to reading

12. Answers.com – higher consciousness – Back to reading

13. Ramachandran, V.S. with Blakemore, Colin, Answers.com – consciousness – Back to reading

14. Adapted from the various writings and seminars of Robert Scheinfeld – Back to reading

15. Roberts, Jane. The Oversoul Seven Trilogy – Back to reading

CHAPTER 10

THE PLAYER MODEL

Back to the Table of Contents

This is your first opportunity to find out “Who am I not?”

You are not your Infinite I. You are not the one who is choosing the wave frequencies from The Field and creating your experiences.

You are not even infinite. Your body, mind, intellect, and everything associated with them are part of your holographic universe. They aren’t real, much less infinite.

Your Infinite I is the “I Am,” and you are the “I think” part of the equation.

If you can really get this at the beginning of your cocoon stage, your metamorphosis will be so much more fun and easy and enjoyable. However, right now your ego – the false personality you’ve constructed over time – is probably screaming in your ear that this is all bullshit and to close the book quickly and stop listening to this lunatic; because your ego wants you to think you’re something you’re not, something “more,” something “special” that is in fact immortal. That way, as long as “you” never die, it doesn’t have to either. But that’s exactly what needs to happen in the cocoon: you and your ego must die just like the caterpillar.

I realize every religion and every spiritual teaching I’m aware of in the movie theater – including the New Age – preaches that you are really a spiritual being (your “soul”) having a physical experience (in your body). Even Robert Scheinfeld, who was my mentor and fellow scout, said your Infinite I (which he called your “Expanded Self”) is “the sun of who you really are;”₁ and if everybody says it, why shouldn’t you believe it?

Because it isn’t true…

…and it is perhaps the greatest error inside the movie theater that prevents all Human Children and Human Adults from becoming butterflies.

As an astronaut on the moon, would you say you were really Mission Control, in charge of the mission?

If you were the right tackle on a football team, would you say you were really the quarterback calling the plays?

If you were a trumpet player in an orchestra, would you say you were really the conductor?

I’m sure you’d like to think you are your consciousness, that you are the “I Am;” but the simple fact you’d like to think you are your consciousness is evidence of which side of the equation you are actually on.

In the end, all that can be known and said to be true is that your Infinite I is the one on the other side of The Field who is creating all your holographic experiences for you, and you are not your Infinite I; and, really, that’s all you need to know.

* * *

What’s the big deal? What’s the problem if we want to think we are our Infinite I’s, the one creating our holographic experiences?

If the astronaut on the moon thought he was Mission Control, what do you think would happen to the mission?

If the right guard on the football team thought he was the quarterback, how many games do you think that team would win?

If the trumpet player in the orchestra thought he was the conductor, what do you think the symphony would sound like?

But more importantly, every moment you spend trying to be your Infinite I is a distraction from the real job you were created to do. Now that you’re in the cocoon, the sooner you can stop trying to be your Infinite I, the more time you will have on finding out who you really are.

Let me use another analogy to make sure I’m being clear about this. If an Infinite I saw the Atlantic Ocean and decided it wanted to go swimming, it might first wonder about the temperature of the water, and then decide to create a big toe on its right foot to test the water before taking the plunge. The job of that big toe would be to have the experience of immersing itself in the water of the Atlantic, and then sending back its feelings to its Infinite I through the feedback connection.

You get the picture. You are the big toe. You are not the whole body, or the brain, or the consciousness. You are the big toe.

If this were the case – if you were the big toe – would you go around telling everyone you were actually the Infinite I? If you truly understood why you were created and your role in relationship to your Infinite I, wouldn’t you be satisfied to do your specific job and do it well, and not try to be more than you are?

But as long as you constantly try to claim you “really are” your Infinite I, can you see you become more of a pain in the ass than a big toe?

Your Infinite I has shown an infinite patience while you have tried to take its job away your entire life, and in the process ignored and denied your actual purpose for existence. But even that wasn’t “wrong,” and worked perfectly for your experiences while in the movie theater. It just won’t work well in the cocoon.

Some of this has to do with the ego, and some with being told by all religions and spiritual teachings we aren’t good enough exactly the way we are, that we’re more than “just” a big toe. If we didn’t feel such shame about who we are, we wouldn’t need anything “better” or “higher” to be or become. When you’re finished with this process in the cocoon, you will know who you really are and be totally satisfied with that and not need to be anything else. “Serenity of being” is what I call it.

* * *

Maybe you don’t believe there is anything other than yourself and your own mind creating all your experiences – nothing “higher,” no soul or spirit or anything like that. Perhaps while in the movie theater you rejected any concept that suggested some “higher power” was at work in your life. Denying the existence of your Infinite I is as much of an error as thinking you are your Infinite I, and in direct conflict with quantum physics and the human brain studies. It may have served you well as a caterpillar, but not any more. However, I don’t blame you or judge you, especially since the “higher power” everyone was trying to convince you existed made no sense in the way they portrayed it. As Philip K. Dick said in his novel, Valis, “The Creator is insane.”

But there is no doubt something (what I am calling the Infinite I) is on the other side of The Field creating you and your holographic experiences. Frankly, it is only your ego that would like you to believe differently, to think you – on this side of The Field – have the power to create anything. You will have a direct experience of this truth in the cocoon, if you can allow yourself to see it.

* * *

If you are not your Infinite I, then what are you? And exactly what’s your relationship to your Infinite I?

The best answer is that you are a “Player” – and so am I – a Player created by your Infinite I to play a game, which it loves to do. (In the next chapter we’ll start talking specifically about the game you’re playing.)

Shakespeare told us over four-hundred years ago: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”₂ Maybe we could have paid more attention.

I have suggested, and will suggest often, there are “hints” and “clues” all around us in plain sight about how this holographic universe works. One of them is the computer video games that have become so popular.

If you’ve never played a video game, you should. They can provide some very deep insights along with a lot of fun. I recommend going to Pirates of the Caribbean Online, which is free from Disney and a good example of what I’m talking about.

Most sophisticated video games, like Pirates, begin by creating a Player to represent you in the game. In Pirates, you can create a new Player from scratch, choosing the gender; the shape of the body; the height; the skin tone; all sorts of designs for the face; the shape of the jaw, lips, and cheeks; the eye color, eyebrows, and shape of the eyes; lots of choices for the nose and ears; the hairstyle and color, including a beard and mustache; and then all combinations of clothing. The last thing you do is choose a name for your Player.

I still marvel at this technology! It seems as if you could create an infinite number of variations of Players from all the different choices.

Now go back to Pirates and create another player (they let you create two for free). This time, however, imagine yourself as an Infinite I who wants to play and express itself creatively, and you want to design a player who will be your representative in this adventure, since you can’t go inside the game and play it yourself.

The point is that you – and I – were created by our Infinite I’s and custom-designed the way they wanted us to look, down to the bridge of our noses. They even gave us our names. (For those who might still believe what we were taught in school that our appearance is the sole result of DNA inherited from our parents, I recommend The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton.)

* * *

Am I saying you are totally “separate” from your Infinite I? No, not at all; not any more than a big toe is “separate” from the rest of the body.

A big toe has its separate function, its specific job to do, but it is part of the whole. A big toe, however, would never think it was the whole body. That would be delusion, which is what all Players in the movie theater suffer from.

Instead, a big toe is constantly connected to its body, and happily and willing receives commands from the brain. In the same way, you – as a Player – are constantly connected to your Infinite I; and as soon as you stop trying to be something you’re not, your connection to your Infinite I will get a lot clearer.

* * *

By now you know I like to let you read quotes from other people who are saying essentially the same thing but in different words, to give you another perspective. In this case, I’m going to bypass quantum physics and go instead to metaphysics.

Darryl Anka is a channel, and the entity who supposedly speaks through him is called “Bashar.” Here’s what Bashar has to say on this topic, which I really like even though he uses the term “higher self”….

“Most of you are familiar with the idea that you have a physical consciousness – a personality as a physical being – that you relate to as ‘yourself.’ But then there is this mysterious idea of the ‘higher self.’ Simply put, most of you understand or at least intuit that the so-called ‘higher self’ is … non-physical. Even more simply you could say that there is a vibrational frequency above physical reality – just beyond physical reality – in which resides what you might refer to as a ‘template’ for physical reality or upon which your physical experience is constructed.

“It might surprise you to know, as personality constructs – as physical minds – you do not conceive of any ideas. The personality does not conceive of concepts. It perceives concepts; it does not conceive them…. The ‘higher self’ conceives; the physical brain receives; the personality mind perceives. That’s all it does. Any idea, any inspiration, any imagination ‘you’ have ever had doesn’t come from the physical mind portion of you; it comes from the ‘higher self’ portion of you through the receiver – the brain – and is translated by the brain into a vibration that the physical mind then perceives as a reflected reality.

“This may sound at first somewhat limiting, but in fact it’s very, very freeing, because you can all stop thinking! You can all stop thinking you’re in charge. You can all stop thinking that you have to think of everything. You can all stop thinking you’re the one guiding the ship. You’re not. You are just looking at the road. You’re just experiencing the path….

“The reason you get into trouble, the reason you feel stuck as a physical mind is because you have been taught to believe that the physical mind is the one coming up with all this stuff. And it’s not. So when you try to manipulate it, it doesn’t work, because the physical mind is not designed to create those concepts. It is only designed to perceive the effect of the creation of [your ‘higher self’] through the receiver, the physical brain.

“This allows you to lighten up your load, stop carrying so much baggage, stop trying to do your ‘higher self’s’ job, and just do your own. That’s why so many of you are so tired; it’s because you’re trying to do a job you weren’t designed to do. That’s exhausting! Stop! You were not hired to do that job. Your ‘higher self’ already has that job and it’s working for you perfectly…. Just do the job you were designed to do, which is perceive.”₃

* * *

Apparently Bashar, or Darryl, can mix metaphors as well as I can! “You can all stop thinking you’re the one guiding the ship. You’re not. You are just looking at the road. You’re just experiencing the path….” – ship, road, path….

So let me say it this way: You are not the one driving the bus. Your Infinite I “hired” you – created you – to sit in the back of the bus and perceive and react and respond to the scenery as it goes by, and that’s all. But you haven’t done the best possible job at that either, since you’ve spent a lot of time up front trying to take the bus driver’s job away from him.

You do not create the scenery (your holographic experiences); you do not choose which scenery to look at; you do not decide what direction the bus will travel. All those jobs belong to the bus driver, your Infinite I.

Who am I not? You are not the bus driver. You are not the one creating your reality. You – on the same side of The Field as reality itself – have no power to create anything, as a matter of fact.

When you finally surrender and accept this fact, it should actually come as quite a relief. After all, we worked very hard while inside the movie theater to create our reality – a reality we wanted – thinking we did indeed drive the bus and were responsible to decide what direction it took and what scenery we would see; and, of course, it didn’t work. At least we didn’t create a reality we really wanted.

Now we can sit back and relax and enjoy the ride, allowing our Infinite I’s to do the driving and know our only job is to react and respond to the scenery – to the experiences that pop up in front of us. “Go Greyhound, and leave the driving to your Infinite I.”

* * *

A few people, when they first hear this, react angrily – almost violently – to the whole idea, thinking I’m suggesting they are nothing more than a puppet or a slave of their Infinite I, who pulls all the strings and the Player dances accordingly. Nothing could be further from the truth. That, in fact, would defeat the entire purpose of the game the Infinite I has created you to play, which is coming in the next chapter.

In order for the game to work for your Infinite I, you, as a Player, must always be free – must always have free will – not to choose or create which holographic experiences you have, but how you will react and respond to them. In fact, this is why you exist as a Player, to use your free will to choose your reactions and responses, and to experience the feelings associated with those reactions and responses. It’s the feelings the Infinite I wants from you; and if you didn’t have free will to choose your feelings, the whole point of the game would be moot.

So you are far from being a puppet or a slave, manipulated by some Infinite I you can’t see and are not even sure exists. You are an integral Player in the game, performing a valuable and unique service to your Infinite I. Think about it… if your Infinite I has to focus on driving the bus all the time, wouldn’t it make sense it would create a part of itself, a representative of itself, to sit in the back of the bus to be the one who could focus solely on the scenery, and then send the feelings from the reactions and responses to the scenery back to the Infinite I through a strong and constant connection?

Do you think the astronaut on the moon considers itself a puppet or slave of Mission Control? Do you think the right guard on the football team considers itself to be a puppet or slave of the quarterback? Do you think the trumpet player in the orchestra considers itself to be a puppet or slave of the conductor?

Obviously not. They know their role and execute it willingly.

Another analogy just occurred to me. At DisneyWorld, Pirates of the Caribbean is a real amusement ride – as compared to the online version I spoke of earlier. You sit in a little boat and are taken on a journey through a number of different scenes and experiences, all of which are designed to give you an inner experience, which can range from joy and excitement to fear and tension. The path of the journey and the scenes you see were created by the designer of the ride, and you don’t choose where the boat goes or what experiences you encounter. Your only job is to sit in the boat and enjoy the ride, reacting and responding to what you see in any way you want; and, of course, no reaction or response you might have could ever be “wrong.”

All the designer of the ride is interested in, and wants, are your feelings to the experiences he has created for you; but I have yet to meet anyone who thinks they are a puppet or a slave of the designer of Pirates of the Caribbean.

It’s only your ego, feeling threatened, that is resisting the idea of being a Player for your Infinite I, coming up with this “puppet” and “slave” argument. It also has to do with being unwilling to relinquish control. Apparently we all want to be the one in control of our life, the Master of our Domain, even though we’d have to admit we haven’t done a very good job of it so far, since no one seems very pleased with the reality they already have.

But that’s exactly the way it was supposed to be as long as you were in the movie theater. You had to believe – as every religion and spiritual philosophy led you to believe – you were the one driving the bus. It was perfect for that purpose.

You’ve left the movie theater now and want to become a butterfly. An important and essential part of that process is giving up the need and the desire to be in control – to let go of the steering wheel, to be willing to do the job you were created for and not try to be the bus driver.

* * *

“Okay, okay. So I’m not a puppet for my Infinite I. I still want to at least be a co-creator of my experiences,” my friend insists.

I want to be very careful with this one, because in a sense we are co-creators – but not the way we normally think of that word. However, it’s possible our reactions and responses to one experience can have an impact on the next experience we have.

If my Infinite I is driving the bus, and I’m sitting in the back reacting and responding to the scenery that goes by my window, I might have a particular reaction or response my Infinite I finds especially interesting and wants to explore. So it might turn around and drive by that scene again, giving me the same experience; or it might drive by another similar scene to see if I respond the same way. You could say my reactions and responses to the first experience helped to “co-create” the same or similar experience later.

For instance, if I react with fear to something in my hologram, my Infinite I might decide to send me another very similar hologram to see how I would react the next time. Maybe it was fascinated by my fear, when it knows there was nothing to be afraid of in the experience it had created for me and wonders why I was so terrified. Or maybe it wants to give me the gift of discovering for myself there is nothing to be afraid of. Or maybe it just wanted to feel my fear again vicariously (which we’ll discuss in the next chapter).

Going back to our example of the Pirates of the Caribbean amusement ride, if the designer were trying to create a successful ride, I assume he would be very interested in the reactions and responses from the participants to the scenes he created for them, and their feedback would play a role in his evolving design – the path the boat took and the experiences they had.

There are all kinds of possibilities. The point is that our reactions and responses to certain experiences might influence the experiences we are given in the future. So I guess you could say, technically, you were “co-creating” those future experiences with your Infinite I as a result of your reactions and responses to the present experience. But that’s stretching the definition of “co-creator” as far as I am concerned; and it doesn’t have to happen that way at all. Your Infinite I is always free to create whatever future experiences it wants for you, regardless of your reaction or response to the present one; and you are never in any way part of the actual creation process of any experience itself.

Unfortunately, that won’t make my friend very happy, because he wants to be a full-fledged co-creator of his experiences to satisfy his own ego and maintain the illusion of some semblance of control over his life.

* * *

I consider L. Ron Hubbard to be both a genius and a madman. Some of his Scientology techniques for letting go of the past can be quite workable for a Human Adult inside the movie theater. But ultimately he committed an “overt” (a wrong action) by telling his followers, “The supreme test of a Thetan is the ability to make things go right.” (“Thetan” was his word for the soul or spirit.)

Consider Hubbard’s two most “Valuable Final Products,” John Travolta and Tom Cruise. I wonder… in light of the family tragedies and professional pitfalls, do you think they feel like they are “making things go right” all the time? How do you feel when you’re told you’re “less than” if you fail to meet some arbitrary spiritual standard?

Inside the movie theater, not everything can “go right,” ever; it was designed that way. John Travolta and Tom Cruise are no different from any other Human Adult who can achieve a few spectacular things in some areas of their lives, but can never get all their ducks in a row at one time as long as they belong to a group in the back of the theater.

Not only is “making things go right” a judgment that keeps Human Adults stuck in the movie theater, but as you now know, a Player has no ability to make anything happen at all. A Player’s only job is to react and respond to what is happening in the holographic universe created for them by their Infinite I.

So you can stop working so hard trying to control your life, trying to “make things go right,” trying to create and manage the holographic images that make up your reality and your life. It’s not possible, it’s a waste of time, and it will wear you out and leave you thinking you’re a failure.

We spent a lot of time as Human Adults in the movie theater taking responsibility for things over which we have no control, and denying or ignoring those things over which we do. The 12-Step program is very close to the truth when it prays:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”₄

You cannot change your holographic experiences, since you did not create them.

You can change your reactions and responses to them.

You’re in the process of gaining the wisdom you need to know the difference.

You can relax now and enjoy the ride; you are not responsible for creating your reality, for making things go right in your life, for you or anyone else. You are only responsible for your reactions and responses to the life your Infinite I creates for you, one moment at a time; and it turns out every single one of your reactions and responses as a Player – even the ones you might consider “bad” or “wrong” – have been valuable and cherished by your Infinite I since you were born.

Let me repeat that because it is so important: Every reaction and response you have had to every moment of your life – the holographic movies created for you by your Infinite I – has been “right” and perfect. You have never done anything “wrong” or made any mistake – ever. Your Infinite I wants each and every feeling you send to it, no matter what that feeling is.

I can say all that, and you might understand it right now intellectually – or not; but you will spend the next two years in your cocoon processing it until you have it on a cellular and emotional level as well – until you feel it as well as know it.

However, I imagine it might all make more sense if you know what game you’re playing. So…

FOOTNOTES

1. Scheinfeld, Robert, The Business School of Consciousness: How to Bust Loose from the “Old” Business Game – Back to reading

2. Shakespeare, William. As You Like It – Back to reading

3. Bashar, channeled by Darryl Anka, from the Bashar Weekend Event called Permission Slips, June 23, 2007, Los Angeles, CA. – Back to reading

4. Wikipedia - Serenity Prayer – Back to reading

CHAPTER 11

THE HUMAN GAME MODEL

Back to the Table of Contents

“Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You felt it your entire life – that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there like a splinter in your mind driving you mad.”

- Morpheus, from The Matrix

There is no way any human being in this holographic universe can know with certainty why their Infinite I created them. The story I am about to tell you, therefore, cannot be called the Truth. Instead it’s a model (like The Field) that comes closer to the Truth than any other model and is extremely workable and effective in the metamorphosis to a butterfly.

And it’s high time for a new model. The models of how the universe works we used inside the movie theater are no longer valid, all based on the wrong premise that the movies we are watching are real. With the recent results in quantum physics and other scientific experiments, we need to come up with a new model that conforms to our new understanding of the holographic universe.

Robert Scheinfeld₁ was the one who introduced me to this model in my early days as a scout. Although I have made certain modifications (which he may or may not agree with), I want to give him the credit for it.

It’s called The Human Game Model.

Let’s eavesdrop on a couple of Infinite I’s who are having a conversation….

“You know, I’ve been thinking…”

“Please tell me not to worry. You know what the Chief said the last time…”

“Not to worry. This is different.”

“Right.”

“I’ve been thinking I want to go to the GAP tonight.”

“Where?”

“The Great Amusement Park.”

“Is that all? Then you’re on! All the different games and attractions….”

“Yes, but tonight I want to tie one hand behind my back in the dart game.”

“What?”

“Am I not speaking clearly? I said I want to tie one hand behind my back in the dart game.”

“I heard you perfectly; you’re just not making any sense. Why would you want to do that?”

“Well, I keep breaking all the balloons every time I play and bringing home another stuffed animal. Now my closet’s full of them.”

“What else can you expect when you have infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite abundance….”

“But I want to experience something a little different for a change – more of a challenge, maybe. I mean, a game you win all the time can get a little boring.”

“So you’re going to throw darts with one hand tied behind your back?”

“Yes. I thought I’d try it at least.”

“This I gotta see….”

“You know, I’ve been thinking….”

“Oh, no. Here we go again.”

“Throwing darts with one hand tied behind my back doesn’t do much. I still break every balloon, and now I’ve got a second closet full of stuffed animals.”

“I’m well aware of that. The second closet used to be mine, remember?”

“So tonight I’m going to tie both hands behind my back.”

“I beg your pardon? How are you going to throw darts with both hands tied behind your back?”

“I don’t know yet; but as you said, I have infinite power and infinite wisdom, so I’ll figure something out.”

“This time I’m the one who’s been thinking….”

“About what?”

“About the fact that I had to build another closet for your stuffed animals. Maybe tonight you should try throwing darts blindfolded….”

“Wow! Great idea!”

“This isn’t working, you know. It’s a good thing we’ve got infinite space for an infinite number of closets.”

“Yes, I know. There’s gotta be a way….”

“A way to do what?”

“A way to experience what it would be like not to be so…. ‘infinite,’ so…. ‘perfect’ all the time.”

“I’m not following…”

“I mean, here we are, with infinite joy, infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite abundance, infinite and unconditional love…. We’re just so… so perfect. Well, maybe I want to feel what it would be like to miss a balloon or two every once in a while – to experience what it would be like not to be so infinite, just for the fun of it. Who knows, maybe I’ll even appreciate my infinite nature more when I know what the opposite feels like.”

“But it’s not possible.”

“What’s not possible?”

“Not being infinite. I mean, that’s who we are… infinite beings. It’s not possible not to be infinite.”

“Maybe not. At least, not for us directly. But what if we create a new game, and then create a player to play it for us?”

“I’m still not following you….”

“You know the Tunnel of Love in the Park where we experience those fantastic images from all the beautiful universes?”

“Oh, yes. It’s one of my favorite rides. I especially like the music that goes along with it! Sing it with me… It’s a small world after….”

“I’m not singing that right now. I’m trying to have a conversation with you about creating a new game where we could experience what it would be like to be limited instead of so bloody infinite and perfect all the time!”

“Oh, we’re going to be serious, are we? Well, as I said, it’s not possible. We’d always know we were infinite, so the game wouldn’t work.”

“You’re right; it’s not possible for us to limit ourselves, which is why I keep breaking all the balloons no matter what I do. As I said, that’s why we have to create an attraction where we don’t actually go in and play. Instead we create a player to go inside and play for us, to represent us in the game.”

“How much fun could that be, if we’re outside and the player is inside? Wouldn’t the player have all the fun instead? And if the player is playing the game, how will we have the experience?”

“We stay connected to our player…”

“You mean, like we’re always connected to the InfiNet?”

“Yes, a lot like that; and the player would send back its feelings through that connection while it was being limited, so we could experience those feelings vicariously.”

“Let me see if I have this right… you want to create something like a video game, with a player who you put through various experiences in which they react to being limited, so they can send back to you their feelings during those experiences of what it’s like not to be infinite.”

“Precisely!”

“I must admit it sounds like it could be fun, and interesting. But how are you going to create these limiting experiences for your player?”

“Oh, that’s the easy part. I’ll just go to The Field, collapse some quantum wave functions and make some holograms.”

“The Field? Are you sure the Chief would approve of using The Field to create a game where the goal was limitation rather than expansion?”

“Why not? You know the Chief doesn’t consider one experience to be ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than any other. All experiences are equal. And the Chief created The Field – whose full name, just to remind you, is The Field of Unlimited Possibilities – because it affords us unlimited possibilities to play, which has to include the possibility to experience limitation as well as expansion. Right?”

“You’ve got a point. But do you really think you can create a holographic game so real, where the player will be so convinced they are being limited, they will react with feelings you could experience?”

“Well, I’ve got some details to work out, but doesn’t it sound like a blast?”

“I don’t know about a ‘blast’… maybe more like a ‘big bang.’ But definitely very creative. I’m still not convinced it’s possible to limit unlimited power or wisdom, so let me know how this works for you…”

“I’ve got a prototype.”

“For what?”

“Did you really forget our conversation, or are you just jerking me around?”

“Remind me…”

“I’m creating a game where we can experience what it’s like not to be so infinite.”

“Oh, yeh, that one.”

“And I created a player to play the game for me….”

“Really?”

“Yes. I went through a lot of trial and error, but I finally came up with something that works. Adam.”

“What?”

“I call it ‘Adam.’”

“Interesting. I won’t ask why right now. Go on…”

“And I created a whole bunch of different holographic scenarios for Adam to experience being limited… and he’s been sending back his feelings to me from those experiences. It’s so cool, and it really works! Wanna see?”

“Sure, I’ll take a look…”

“Wow! That’s a beautiful game world – clear blue skies, lush green forests, turquoise oceans… really amazing. And you did all this with holograms?”

“Yes. Like I said, that was the easy part. I call it ‘Earth.’”

“Okay… whatever.”

“The hard part was figuring out how to make the holograms appear in space and time so Adam would think he was inside something like a total immersion movie.”

“And?”

“And so I created a ‘brain’.”

“I can see I’m going to need a dictionary before we’re through. What’s a ’brain’?”

“A ‘brain’ is a kind of holographic processor. What I do is download the quantum wave frequencies I’ve chosen from The Field for my Earth Environment to one side of Adam’s brain, usually while he’s asleep…”

“And Adam doesn’t know what’s happening?”

“Actually, when he wakes up, he has these… well, sort of memories of something occurring during the night, but all the pictures are jumbled together and nothing makes any sense to him – kind of like trying to read a zip file.”

“Okay, go on…”

“Then when I’m ready, I unzip them and move them to the other side of his brain; and in the process of moving from one side to the other, the brain translates the wave frequencies into particle locations, creating a holographic picture, which it then projects out through the senses into space and time for Adam to perceive and experience.”

“It sounds fairly simple….”

“Yeh, it’s basically like the central processing unit in our computers that takes binary code and translates it into what we see on our screens. But Adam thinks it’s happening ‘out there,’ and all around him, independent of his own brain - as if it were some kind of objective reality.”

“So what exactly is Adam doing now?”

“Chasing a rabbit.”

“A what?”

“I call that little furry white thing a ‘rabbit.’”

“Where are you getting these names? Oh, never mind. He’ll never catch the rabbit, though; it’s too fast for him.”

“Exactly, and that’s the point. Adam is experiencing the limitation of having a body, and he’s sending his feelings about that back to me.”

“Which are…?”

“I would say right now he’s a little… frustrated. And that’s perfect – an amazing thing to feel! If I were chasing that rabbit here, I’d catch it every time, just like I break every balloon. This is precisely what I was hoping to feel!”

“I can’t feel anything.”

“Of course not. Adam’s my player. I’m the only one who can feel what he’s feeling.”

“So, if I want to have a similar experience….”

“You have to create your own player.”

“Is that possible?”

“I can work on it.”

* * *

This may sound incredible, and you might be laughing or thinking I’ve totally lost it. But is it any more incredible than all the other creation stories found in every one of the world’s religions? Is it any more theoretical than a “big bang” no one can find or explain? Is it any stranger than aliens from the Twelfth Planet genetically engineering homo sapiens by combining the DNA of apes with themselves, as our Sumerian forefathers apparently believed?₂

It’s actually not entirely out of the realm of possibility that an Infinite I wanted to experience what it felt like to be imperfect, to limit unlimited power and joy and abundance and wisdom and love, to be involved in drama and conflict and pain and suffering. After all, if you remember, one of the attributes I gave an Infinite I was the infinite desire to play and express itself creatively. I can imagine a game where an Infinite I could experience being the opposite of what it really is might be very interesting and exciting – not to mention extremely difficult to pull off. How does one limit unlimited power? How does one restrict unlimited wisdom? How does one forfeit unlimited joy and love? And how does one create scarcity in the face of unlimited abundance?

The conversation went on…

“Are you ready?”

“For what?”

“To create your own player.”

“Okay. Show me.”

“First, there are some rules of the game you must agree to before we start. Number One, the Chief has been very clear: Any creation must have complete free will. Once you’ve created your player, you cannot interfere with their decisions and choices at any time for any reason.”

“You mean, I just create a player and turn them loose on your ‘Earth’?”

“Oh, no way. You have to create every second of every experience for your player, down to the smallest detail. They can’t create anything. They’re part of the hologram. They’re on the wrong side of The Field and have no power at all to create any experiences for themselves. But once you’ve created an experience for them, they must have total free will to choose how they want to respond or react to that experience.”

“I have no problem with that.”

“Good. Rule Number Two, your player can’t know it’s your player; otherwise, it taps into your infiniteness through the connection. It must think it has its own consciousness and identity, and is not just a temporary representative, an extension of you created for the game.”

“I can agree to that.”

“Rule Number Three, your player also can’t know it’s a game. It has to believe it’s real. It has to take it seriously or it doesn’t work.”

“You mean, Adam doesn’t know it’s all a hologram?”

“No! Adam is part of the hologram. A hologram looks and feels real to anything inside the hologram itself. Adam thinks the garden I made for him actually exists – he even eats the holographic apples, for example!”

“Well, I won’t tell him it’s not real.”

“You’re right – you can’t tell him, unless I agree, which is Rule Number Four. You’re going to create your own player with its own experiences, but I’ve figured out how different players’ holograms can interact….”

“Wait a minute… are you saying I’m not going to use your holograms?”

“No, you can’t. You can use the collection of holographic ‘Earth Environments’ I’ve created as a template for your player, if you want. And I actually suggest you do that, because if your player and my player interact, I think it would be easier if they both saw virtually the same things in their holograms; otherwise they’ll spend all their time arguing about the color ‘blue,’ for example, or whether there are one or two suns in the sky.”

“We wouldn’t want that now, would we?”

“Actually, it could be interesting – probably result in some strange feelings coming back through the connection; maybe eventually get some players really upset if the reality they saw was too much different from other players. But I think it would work better for now at least if our two players saw pretty much the same things.”

“But my player’s holograms will be completely separate from Adam’s?”

“Absolutely. Each player must have its own separate individual and unique reality. You create your own player’s reality, and I create my player’s reality. Because of the way I’ve worked it out for players’ holograms to interact with each other, they might think they’re connected, that they’re all ‘one,’ or that they share the same holographic universe; but it won’t be true. That’s the only way this can work.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, getting back to what we were talking about, Rule Number Four is – if we decide we want your player and my player to interact – your player can never do or say anything in my player’s holograms I have not agreed to beforehand. Otherwise, you would actually be creating experiences for my player – and me for yours.”

“And that would be bad, because….”

“Because the Chief insists no one can ever be a victim of anything at any time; and if you had the ability to create experiences for my player by doing or saying something I didn’t want or didn’t approve of or didn’t know about, my player could then become a victim of your creations. My guess is that a player might feel like it’s a victim from time to time – and that’s good for us because it will simply lead to more limitation – but it can never actually be the case. I must always have 100% script approval for every detail prior to anything happening in my player’s holograms. And the same thing goes for you and your player.”

“I got it.”

“So now are you ready?”

“Yes, but I want a player very different from Adam.”

“Well, do you want a human player, or an animal player – maybe a dolphin?”

“A dolphin looks like a lot of fun. But what’s Adam?”

“Adam is a human being. This is called the Human Game.”

“So I want a human, too. But still, I want a human that’s different….”

“Okay, you can create whatever you want as long as it has two legs, two arms, two eyes, two ears….”

“Wow! That’s interesting. What do you call it?”

“Eve.”

* * *

Word about the new Human Game apparently spread quickly all over InfiniteLand via InfiMail. Soon there were many other Infinite I’s who wanted to play and the human population on Earth began to grow. And then…

“Wait a minute. I have another idea.”

“Your last one was pretty good. What’s this one?”

“Let’s divide the Human Game into two parts. The first half will be to see how far into limitation we can take our Players, and then the second half will be to bring them back out again.”

“Here’s a million that says I can take my Player further into limitation than you can take yours and still bring it home safely!”

“You’re on!”

* * *

Again, I’m not trying to claim any of this is true. We may never know. But human beings seem to have an abundance of curiosity; so although it’s futile and irrelevant to speculate on why an Infinite I would create the Human Game, we do it anyway. I’m no different. Here are a few of the thoughts I’ve had over the years….

Do Pete Sampras or Roger Federer or Martina Navratilova or the Williams sisters get bored after a while playing tennis so well? Do they play with the “wrong” hand occasionally just to see if they can – just to make the game more interesting – just for the challenge and the experience?

Does anyone play darts sometimes with their eyes closed, just for the fun?

I remember when I was three or four years old, the house I lived in had a brick walkway from the front door leading to three steps which went down to the street. I would take my tricycle, back it up against the front door, peddle as hard and fast as I could down the walkway, and then slam on the brakes and see how close I could get to the edge of the top step before I fell over. (The last time I tried this was when I fell down the stairs into the street, splitting my lip wide open.) So I can totally relate to the idea of playing a game to its maximum limits, to see how far one can push oneself.

I also remember wanting to go higher and higher on a rollercoaster, eager to find the biggest one I could, even though the first hill up was always a bitch.

Or maybe an Infinite I wants to play the Human Game purely to experience what a physical universe feels like. There was an interesting 1996 movie with John Travolta called Michael, in which Travolta plays an archangel who came to Earth to experience how it felt to have a body. He reveled in it – smoking, drinking, eating as much sugar and meat as he could, exercising his very active libido, and enjoying every moment. Of course, most “new-agers” didn’t like the movie because nearly everything Michael did was contrary to their beliefs of what an “enlightened” being would do. But once again this movie could provide a “clue” to an Infinite I’s motivation.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “As above, so below.” Now we understand the opposite is true, “As below, so above.” We all go to the movies, watch sports, or listen to music in order to have an “inner experience” from the “outer experience.” Even golf is played for the inner experience it creates, according to the experts. The Human Game, then, could be an “outer experience” created for a Player by its Infinite I so the Infinite I can have the “inner experience” – the feelings it receives through the connection to its Player.

There may be many other reasons why an Infinite I would create a Player to experience life on Earth, and maybe you’ll come up with one or more on your own. But the bottom line is, it doesn’t matter why; and we will probably not know the complete answer as long as we are Players on this side of The Field. Fortunately, not knowing why doesn't affect the way we play the Human Game here and now.

What matters is that the Human Game, as a model, answers a lot of questions more logically and more understandably and more consistently than any other model to date – like why our movies seem to be filled with drama and conflict, pain and suffering, and what our purpose is to be here.

This model could change as we get more information, as more research is done in quantum physics, as more scouts come back with new reports of what they’ve found. But the most important thing is, right now, this model leads to very practical, useful, and effective ways to go through our metamorphosis in the cocoon; and that’s the only real value in having such a model.

So what if the opposite of everything we believed while in the movie theater is true?

~ What if life is not a school, or a training ground, or a test, or a “bitch,” but a fun ride in an amusement park instead?

~ What if the purpose of life on Earth is not to learn something (thinking), but to experience something (feeling)?

~ What if we as Players are supposed to feel “separate” from our Infinite I’s, rather than bemoaning the fact or trying to “reconnect”?

~ What if our connection to our Infinite I has never been broken, but we were supposed to think it was in order to play the Game?

~ What if every experience we have ever had and will ever have is exactly the way our Infinite I wants it, and there’s nothing to be changed, fixed, or improved in our holograms?

~ What if all the things we have resisted are actually what our Infinite I’s have wanted us to experience, and it is only our judgment and resistance causing our pain and suffering?

~ What if we have never done anything “wrong,” but only think we have, and believe everyone else when they tell us we’re defective and deficient, sinners who need to be saved?

~ What if the Earth doesn’t need to be saved either – that it has its own Infinite I who is creating the precise experiences it wants as well?

~ What if it is only our ego that says we have the power to create or change anything about our reality, and that all power actually resides with the Infinite I on the other side of The Field?

~ What if we don’t need any “self-help” – no magic formulas, no “Secrets,” no “spiritual laws,” no gurus, and no special techniques to try to make things different than they are?

~ What if, no matter what we do in the first half of the Human Game – like meditate, pray, eat only organic food, and so on – it will not change anything until we have experienced all the imperfection and limitation and restrictions our Infinite I wants and it’s ready for us to play the second half?

~ What if all we need to do is relax, enjoy the experiences our Infinite I creates for us (whatever they may be), and stop judging those experiences to be “good” or “bad,” “better” or “worse,” “right” or “wrong”?

~ What if humankind itself has never made any mistake either, but instead has explored the heights of limitation as a species exactly as the Infinite I’s wanted?

~ What if, not understanding this, we have made up many “stories” to try to explain what we experience – religions, philosophies, and beliefs – many of which contain some truth, but which are always altered so they actually lead into more limitation?

~ What if it’s now time in the Human Game for many more people to enter their cocoons, to play the second half of the Human game, to go over the top of the first hill on the rollercoaster and enjoy the ride back to InfiniteLand?

* * *

MOVIE SUGGESTION: The Game, starring Michael Douglas (1997)

FOOTNOTES

1. RobertScheinfeld.com – Back to reading

2. Sitchin, Zecharia. Twelfth Planet: Book I of the Earth Chronicles – Back to reading

CHAPTER 12

THE TWO HALVES MODEL

Back to the Table of Contents

Before we go on, I want to make sure I’m not confusing you with too many mixed metaphors and analogies (and there are more on the way!). For example, we just said the Human Game was divided into two halves. How does that line up with the Movie Theater and Butterfly metaphors?

The first half of the Human Game – going deeper and deeper into limitation and restriction, with all the drama and conflict and pain and suffering – would be Stages 1 and 2 of a butterfly (the egg and caterpillar), or everything that happens inside the movie theater to the Human Children and Human Adults.

The second half of the Human Game would be Stages 3 and 4 (the cocoon and the butterfly), or everything that happens once you walk out the back door of the movie theater and into your cocoon.

If we take a look at the different rules for both halves of the Human Game, I think it might become more obvious….

The rules for the first half of the Human Game (inside the movie theater) are:₁

1. The Players must forget who they really are and believe they are something else instead – at the extremes, for example, that they are their body or their Infinite I.

2. The Players must believe their holographic experiences are real and what they perceive with their senses is actually happening “out there,” in some objective and independent reality.

3. The Players must believe what they encounter “out there” has power over them and the power to affect their lives.

4. The Players must believe in the judgments of “good and bad,” “right and wrong,” “better and worse,” “good and evil.”

5. The Players must believe there is something “wrong” with the reality they see “out there” that needs to be changed or fixed or improved.

6. The Players must believe they have the power to create a different reality than what they are experiencing and therefore feel defective and deficient (more limited) when they fail.

7. The Players must believe they can think their way out of the Human Game by using their mind, or love their way out of it by using their heart.

8. The Players must believe they can “make something happen,” and when they fail, blame themselves for not being smarter or better or working harder.

9. The Players must believe there are goals to be reached or agendas to be satisfied or lessons to be learned.

10. The Players must believe they, and they alone, are responsible for meeting their own needs and wants, which they have to fight for.

11. Fear and resistance are the foundations of the first half of the Game, and judgment and their resulting beliefs are the glue that keeps the illusions working.

12. These illusions must never break down or the Players would see through the Game.

Did any of those sound familiar?

According to this model, the first half of the Human Game was designed to experience limitation and restriction – in all shapes and sizes – and all these rules lead to that. So if you have been following the rules (and you literally could not do anything else), you have most likely experienced a great deal of limitation and restriction in your life. You just didn’t know why until now, because you weren’t supposed to.

I understand you probably didn’t like the limitations and restrictions of the first half of the Human Game, that they didn’t feel “good,” that they didn’t feel “right,” and that you thought you had been doing something “wrong.” But you didn’t do anything “wrong,” and neither did I. We played the Game exactly as we should, exactly as our Infinite I’s wanted us to. Even our resistance and judgments weren’t “wrong,” since they led to more limitation, which is precisely what the Infinite I wanted to feel. In other words, we’ve been doing a fantastic job as the Players we were created to be. We just didn’t know it and couldn’t appreciate it from our vantage point.

Here’s something we might be able to appreciate – how an Infinite I pulled this off, how it managed to limit unlimited power, unlimited joy, unlimited abundance, unlimited wisdom, and unlimited love. What a creation! What a game!

* * *

Since the first half of the Human Game is intentionally the opposite of the natural state of an Infinite I, it takes an enormous amount of power to create it and keep it going, like a rollercoaster in an amusement park….

The first thing that happens when you get on a rollercoaster is that you go up a big hill – and for many people, the higher the better. But getting up this hill requires us to defy all natural laws, like the law of gravity. It takes a lot of power to pull us up that first hill; and on the way, we go through all kinds of “inner experiences.” In many people, fear is the most common; others have a wide variety of responses, from excitement to panic and even nausea.

I would resist that first hill with everything I had. I didn’t like it, it didn’t feel good, it wasn’t natural, and all I wanted to do was get out of there. But I also knew what was coming, the fun just over the crest of the hill.

Likewise, going as much as possible into limitation and restriction produces the same reactions as going up the first rollercoaster hill – you don’t like it, it doesn’t feel good, it isn’t natural, and all you want to do is get out of there. So we resist the first half and wonder why we’re having these experiences. But it’s supposed to feel like that; that’s the Game.

Another reason I like the rollercoaster analogy is that we can never experience or appreciate the ride to come if we don’t first go up the big hill.

Also like the Human Game, a rollercoaster has two “halves” – you go up the hill in the first half, and down the hill in the second half. If looked at objectively, the first half is no “better” or “worse” than the second half. In fact, the second half could not exist without the first half. So there can be no “judgment” that one half is better than the other.

More importantly, someone riding on the second half of the rollercoaster is no more “enlightened” or “better” or “more advanced” or “ascended” than someone going up the first hill. They’re just at a different point on the ride.

Therefore someone like me, near the end of my cocoon stage, is no more “enlightened” or “better” or “more advanced” or “ascended” than someone still inside the movie theater. I’m just at a different point in my metamorphosis, that’s all, having already experienced much of the ride that comes after the top of the rollercoaster hill.

The last reason I like this analogy is that it reverses how we normally think about limitation. Rather than going “down” into limitation, or “down” into the depths, the first half of the rollercoaster is “up.” So instead of saying we hit “bottom” in our lives, it’s better in my mind to say we reach the pinnacle, or the peak, or the apex of limitation, when it’s then time to start the second half of the Game. For me this also helps take away the judgment.

The day I told you about, sitting in my apartment, realizing I had no job, no money, no this and that, was my moment at the top of the rollercoaster hill – a brief moment of seeming weightlessness, when you’ve stopped climbing that interminable and awful first hill, when you can let go of all the resistance you had going up but have not yet started the ride down. This is the moment of no judgment, the moment of clarity, the moment of complete objectivity. This is a very brief moment when you can be appreciative you made it to the top, and even appreciative of the climb itself. You’re not even looking ahead to the next part of the ride, but simply suspended in space and time.

And then you walk through the door in the back of the movie theater and the second half of the Human Game begins. (How’s that for mixing metaphors!)

* * *

Basically, the second half the Human Game is the opposite of the first half. (Some of these will be discussed in more detail in later chapters.)

1. The Player knows what it has been calling “reality” is not real at all, but a hologram created by its Infinite I to play the Human Game. This Game is being played by consciousness, in consciousness, and for consciousness; and in fact “there is no ‘out there’ out there,’ no independent objective reality.

2. The Player knows once it has moved into the second half, all holograms experienced by the Player will be totally in support of its metamorphosis into a butterfly, rather than toward more limitation and restriction.

3. The Player knows it can never and will never experience anything in any hologram its Infinite I has not created and wanted to experience, and that its Infinite I has written and approved the script being used by anyone else appearing in the Player’s hologram. No one in the Player’s hologram can ever do or say anything its Infinite I has not requested.

4. The Player knows its focus changes from thinking to feeling. In the second half there is nothing to analyze, dissect, or understand – never any reason to ask “why?” Thinking and studying are now only the result of an inner curiosity to expand one’s knowledge instead of being required to figure out the world or make a Player “better” or more “enlightened.”

5. The Player switches from "giving its power away" to make a hologram real, to "taking its power back" from it. When holograms appear that cause any kind of discomfort, it is an indication that the Player assigned some power to that hologram to make it real while playing in the first half, and this is the opportunity to recognize the hologram was in fact not real at all and reclaim that power from it.

6. The Player leaves behind any and all judgment of anyone or anything in any hologram at any time, such as “good” and “bad,” or “right” and “wrong.” As Rudyard Kipling said in his poem, If: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same….”

7. The Player knows there is never anything that needs to be fixed or changed or improved in the holograms it experiences as the world around them.

8. The Player changes from being “proactive” to being “reactive.” There is nothing the Player ever again needs to “make happen.” Being “reactive” means that when a holographic illusion that appears “out there” seems to require a decision, a response, or an action, the Player takes it (as long as it does not include discomfort). Or, when the Player feels an internal motivation or impulse to act, it does. In other words, the Player follows its inner excitement as long as it is fun and brings total joy.

9. The Player lives from moment to moment, one day at a time. There are no goals, no planning, no targets, no objectives, and no agendas. There is no past and no future – just “now.”

10. The Player develops a deep love and sincere appreciation for its Infinite I, for itself as the Player, and for all the first half holographic creations, even though at the time of the experience they may have seemed less than joyful. The Player marvels in awe at the beautiful, perfect, and miraculous job the Player did in the first half to convince itself it was real, and that the holographic world it saw around it was real.

11. The Player has the “knowing” and the complete trust its Infinite I will take care of all its needs (including money), and there is no reason to worry about anything. The Infinite I would not create a hologram it wanted the Player to experience if it did not also give it everything it needs for that experience.

12. The Player wakes up each day looking forward with curious anticipation to the experiences its Infinite I will create for it that day; and the Player buckles up, relaxes, and enjoys the ride.

* * *

At the risk of overkill, I would like to offer two more analogies (or are they metaphors?) to ensure I’ve expressed myself well.

Actually, I mentioned one before, which I now want to expand on….

Imagine a Greyhound bus driving down the highway. At the wheel is an Infinite I. The Infinite I realizes it cannot drive the bus and fully enjoy the scenery along the way at the same time, so it creates a Player to sit in one of the seats and enjoy the scenery for it. In fact, the Infinite I realizes it can create forty different Players, if it wants, to occupy all the seats in the bus and get forty different viewpoints of the scenery. (If this surprises you, read Chapter Twenty-Six, “One Player per Infinite I?”, in Part Three of this book.)

There is a wire connecting the Infinite I in the driver's seat to each of the Players in the passenger seats, like an Ethernet connection. Through this wire the Infinite I downloads a holographic movie to each of its Passenger/Players, which is then projected on the window next to the Passenger. But rather than just seeing the 3D movie that is projected on the window, the Passenger actually becomes immersed in the scenery and part of the movie itself.

Each Passenger can only see out its own window, and therefore each Passenger has a totally unique experience. As it reacts and responds to the scenery it sees, it sends its feelings back up the Ethernet wire to the Infinite I, which can then experience the scenery vicariously through this Passenger.

The Passenger's job is not to drive the bus or decide what pictures it will experience. Its job is simply to have the experience and the feelings that result from it.

Does this make the Passenger "separate" from the driver? Yes, in a sense. It has to be separate in order not to think about driving the bus so it can fully experience the scenery. But no, it's not "separate," in that it was created by its Infinite I as an extension of itself and is always connected to the Infinite I through the Ethernet wire.

Is it “wrong” to feel like we are separated from our Infinite I’s? Absolutely not. That’s the way the Game was designed to work.

Our problem as Passengers is that we have been trying to drive the bus, trying to decide what experiences we will have, mainly because we have had experiences in the past which we judged to be "wrong" or "uncomfortable," and decided we wanted to avoid those experiences in the future and so tried to take over the bus driver's job. Or we had experiences in the past we liked a lot and wanted to repeat.

Any Passenger who truly accepts their role as a Passenger and lets go of any judgments or beliefs about the scenery it experiences can sit back and relax and totally enjoy the ride. There is also tremendous relief in realizing, as a Passenger, no reaction or response it has can be "wrong" – that every reaction and response of each Passenger on the bus is valuable and desirable and wanted by its Infinite I.

* * *

The second analogy has to do with one of my favorite games, a treasure hunt. In fact, I considered calling this book The Great Treasure Hunt, and using that as the main metaphor, because that’s what the Human Game really is.

In a good treasure hunt, someone hides something and then makes up clues for the players to try to find it. The game excites me so much because it combines mental acuity – figuring out what the clues mean – along with obstacles to overcome, and in some cases physical demands as well in the process of finding the treasure.

In the Human Game, it was even harder. We didn’t know we were playing a game; we didn’t know we were looking for a treasure or what the treasure was; we didn’t know all the experiences we were having were perfect for the game; we didn’t know there were clues we were being given from time to time, nor what the clues meant. We even got stuck during the treasure hunt, stopping in one particular location or situation or experience and staying there, never getting to the treasure itself.

In short, most of us didn’t have a lot of fun.

In fact, many people get really pissed at their Infinite I for putting them through such drama and conflict and pain and suffering in the first half of the Human Game; and yet those same people seem to enjoy a good treasure hunt, where they have only hints and clues and many obstacles to overcome before they can find the treasure. No one gets pissed at the designer of a good treasure hunt, do they?

Very few people I know get angry at their parents for bringing them into this world as a defenseless, helpless, totally dependant baby. But they rage at their Infinite I, for some reason, for creating them to play the Human Game.

“That’s all well and good,” you might be saying, “but I didn’t agree to being a Player for my Infinite I. I didn’t agree to go through years of pain and suffering so my Infinite I could play some kind of sick game for its own entertainment!”

Maybe; maybe not. But this anger, while seemingly justified on the surface, is full of judgment and blame. It’s also not true. Your Infinite I did not create your pain and suffering; your resistance to your experiences did. We will talk more about this later.

The important thing is that it’s all over now. You got to the treasure chest and opened it. There was a note inside saying, “It isn’t real; it’s just a game;” and now you’re on your way back to the starting line to claim your prize.

There is only one problem. The only way to get back to the starting line is to fly; and on your way to the treasure, you picked up a lot of baggage at each of your stops – too much baggage and too heavy to fly with as a butterfly. So now you’ve got to let go of all that baggage, which in this case is the personality you constructed along the way – your “self,” your ego.

* * *

Now that the two halves of the Human Game make more sense, you might be asking, “What’s the point of all of this?”

The point is, what are you going to do in your cocoon? What’s going to happen now that you’re playing the second half of the Human Game?

During the first half, you encountered numerous holographic experiences which, based on the fears we will discuss later, you judged as “bad,” “wrong,” “worse,” “evil,” or just plain “undesirable;” and you tried everything in your power to change or fix or improve those experiences. In doing so, you assigned power “out there” and made the holograms seem real.

As time went on, you formed beliefs and opinions about the experiences, about other people, and about the world around you. Those judgments and beliefs and opinions, in fact, defined who you believed you were. They became part of your “self,” the layers of false identity called the ego.

Now it’s your job to reverse that process.

Every judgment you made while inside the movie theater of “good” and “bad,” “right” and “wrong”, “better” and “worse,” good” and “evil” – both as a Human Child and a Human Adult – are no longer valid.

Every belief and opinion you held was based on a false premise – that the movies you were watching were real – and are therefore untrue.

Every attachment you made to these judgments, beliefs and opinions created a new, false layer of identity you believed was who you really were.

So now you’re going to be given the opportunity by your Infinite I to revisit all those judgments and beliefs and opinions and, this time, change your reaction or response to the experiences that created them. In the process you will be able to let go of the layers of false identities that make up your ego – and the fears underlying them – and make your way toward the true answer to “Who Am I?”

How this happens is relatively simple.

In fact, you don’t have to do anything. It’s much better if you don’t try to make things happen any more. Your Infinite I will create everything for you, as it has always done. All you have to do is become fully conscious and aware of your reactions and responses to your experiences on a moment-to-moment basis, and be willing to look at them in the present time honestly and without justification. This means you have to stay awake with your eyes open, and not in some meditative sleep or altered state of consciousness.

But this is no cake walk. It requires high mental acuity, and includes deep emotional and even physical demands.

Basically, you will “re-live” or “re-visit” many of the key experiences from your past, which means the movies that surround you in the cocoon for the next little while will look very much the same as they did in the movie theater. Some of the characters involved may be slightly different than the first time through the movie, but the basic theme is the same or very similar.

This time, however, you have the choice of changing your reaction and response to these experiences by seeing the power you assigned “out there” to make your holographic universe seems real, and then letting go of the judgments, beliefs, and opinions you formed as a result. This will be a good start, and then it’s on to the next experience.

I want to be clear that you don’t have to go searching in your past for an experience to process. Your Infinite I will re-create these experiences in the present for you to deal with in the here and now. This is not psychotherapy designed to discover your mother didn’t breastfeed you long enough, or to overcome a dysfunctional family history.

It’s about “what is, now.”

It’s about letting go of the fears that dominate your thoughts in the present and about the attachments to your “self,” the layers of false identities, the personality construct called the ego you think is you.

It’s about a war with Maya, the Goddess of Illusion, as Jed McKenna would say.

It’s about finding out who you really are.

It’s about discovering what is true.

It’s about becoming a fully realized “no-self” with serenity of being.

FOOTNOTES

1. Based loosely on the work of Robert Scheinfeld – Back to reading

CHAPTER 13

THE PROCESS

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I said at the end of the last chapter "you will 're-live' or 're-visit' many of the key experiences from your past, which means the movies that surround you in the cocoon for the next little while will look very much the same as they did in the movie theater. Some of the characters involved may be slightly different than the first time through the movie, but the basic theme is the same or very similar. This time, however, you have the choice of changing your reaction and response to these experiences by seeing the power you assigned 'out there' to make your holographic universe seems real, and then letting go of the judgments, beliefs, and opinions you formed as a result."

Different scouts have different methods for processing the holographic experiences created for you in the cocoon by your Infinite I, and I doubt there’s a “right” way or a “wrong” way, or just one way.

There’s no question there’s only one place to end up – as a butterfly. But there may be as many ways to emerge from the cocoon as there are routes across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

It might be helpful to look at a couple methods used by other scouts to give you a clue about where and how to find what works for you.

* * *

Robert Scheinfeld, whom I have called my mentor, came up with a Process that goes something like this…

1. Remind yourself it isn’t real

2. Dive right smack into the middle of it

3. Feel the "discomfort energy" fully

4. When it reaches a peak, call it what it is and tell the truth about it

5. Reclaim your power from the creation

6. Express appreciation₁

In other words, as you continue with your life, immersed in the movies in your cocoon, there will be times when an experience brings you less than total joy – “discomfort” Robert calls it, which includes mental discomfort as well as physical and emotional discomfort, all the way from a slight emotional reaction to intense pain and suffering. The easiest way to spot this is that you will wish something about your present hologram would change, because you don’t like some part (or all) of it very much.

Let’s be very clear and specific about what we mean by “discomfort.” Physical discomfort should be fairly obvious, ranging from an “owie” to severe and debilitating pain. Emotional or mental discomfort, on the other hand, can be a little more subtle.

L. Ron Hubbard invented an “emotional tone scale” in which he lists a lot of the “uncomfortable” emotions we can feel from time to time, including (in part): anger, antagonism, anxiety, apathy, blame, covert hostility, despair, dying, fear, grief, hate, hiding, hopeless, hostility, no sympathy, pity, propitiation, regret, resentment, self-abasement, shame, sympathy, terror, total failure, unexpressed resentment, useless, victim.₂

I can think of some other feelings that could be considered as “discomfort” as well, such as bitterness, condemnation, condescension, depression, embarrassment, envy, exasperation, frustration, humiliation, impatience, indecision, indignation, intolerance, jealousy, mistrust, reproach, revenge, sadness, sarcasm, spite, worrying.

But we can make this very simple by saying “discomfort” is anything you feel that is less than total excitement, joy, and enthusiasm.

Whenever we feel one of these emotions, or physical pain, the first thing we do is judge it to be “wrong” or “bad” or “undesirable” – something we don’t want to feel. Then we resist it. Then we assign power “out there” to the person, place, or thing that made us feel less than totally joyful. “He,” “she”, or “it” caused me to feel this way, whether it’s an emotional upset or an upset stomach. In other words, we “blame” whatever is “out there” that “did this to me.” Then we try to change, fix, or improve that situation somehow.

Even those of us who have believed for years “you create your own reality” do this, whether we like to admit it or not, or whether we might think we’re too “enlightened” for that. We do it anyway, in greater or lesser ways, if we’re really honest with ourselves; and rightfully so, because it’s an intrinsic part of the first half of the Human Game which we played for so long and which led into more limitation.

In the cocoon you’re going to have similar experiences to those from the first half of the Game. Basically, you’re going to find yourself immersed in movies with people, places, and things that make you feel “discomfort” from time to time. Some of the people you encounter, for example, might piss you off the same way they did the first time you met them – or the second time, or the umpteenth time.

Rest assured this is not a hologram created by your Infinite I in order to create more limitation in your life. This hologram is a gift to you from your Infinite I, showing you exactly where you assigned power in the past to something “out there,” and, most importantly, where that power still resides. It is your chance to respond differently to this hologram – to, in a sense, “reclaim” the power you gave away and rewrite the ending to this storyline.

Whenever you feel this discomfort – whenever you have the slightest thought you wish something “out there” in your present experience would change – Robert says to run his Process; so let’s take a little closer look at it. (Again, Robert may or may not agree fully with some of my extended explanations.)

1. Remind yourself it isn’t real. Remember that you are immersed in a hologram, and by definition a hologram is not real. You only make it real if you assign it the power to be real and give it control over you.

2. Dive right smack into the middle of it. This is the opposite of what we normally did in the first half of the Human Game. Whenever we would meet something “out there” that made us uncomfortable – pain and suffering, for example – we would try to get away from it, resist it, suppress it, change it, ignore it, drug it, deny it, hide from it, escape it, or otherwise make it go away. Robert says, on the other hand, to embrace it fully, to see it in all its glory, to invite it closer and get yourself into the middle of it as completely as possible.

3. Feel the “discomfort energy” fully. Rather than rushing through the Process as soon as you feel the least little discomfort, let it build as much as possible.

There’s a very simple reason for this. What we want to do next, according to Robert, is “reclaim the power” we assigned “out there” in these holograms. In many cases, we have “given” a lot of power away to certain people, places, and things that resulted in our feeling less than joyful. In fact, it may take more than one experience in the second half of the Human Game to switch off that power flow; and the more we can get at one time, the faster and easier the process will be to “reclaim” it all. Therefore let the discomfort grow as much as possible to process as much as you can at one time; and then be prepared to do it again later, either with the same person, place, or thing, or a similar situation, until all the power you have placed “out there” has been turned off.

(There are some workable techniques you might want to use to help the discomfort build, like “Focusing” developed by Dr. Eugene Gendlin.₃)

4. When it reaches a peak, call it what it is and tell the truth about it. When the discomfort has become as much as you can stand at that moment, it’s time to honestly assess the situation and look for your judgments, beliefs, and opinions. For example, is there someone or something in this experience you think is “wrong” or “bad” and should change or be different than it is? Who or what, specifically? And is that true?

Is there a belief you hold causing the discomfort? Exactly what is it? And is it true?

Did you form an opinion that is now causing you discomfort in this experience? What is it, and is it really true?

(It can help a lot to actually write these things down as you go through the Process, at least in the beginning.)

One of the things you don’t ask is “Why” this experience is happening to you. That’s a distraction that has no relevance and will keep you from focusing on what does matter. Asking “Why” is what everyone does inside the movie theater, because it leads into more and more limitation; but inside the cocoon it’s a useless concept. Maybe you will understand “Why,” and maybe not; it doesn’t matter.

As the experiences in your cocoon continue, you might start to see patterns in your life that revolve around certain key judgments and beliefs and opinions. You can expect to have similar holograms appear that give you the opportunity to follow those patterns, perhaps back to the first time you formed that judgment, or adopted that belief, or created that opinion.

So “calling it what it is” means acknowledging and owning up to the fact that your discomfort is based on the judgments, beliefs, and opinions you formed as a reaction or response to this situation.

The “truth about it” is that no one and nothing “out there” is going to change to make you happier. You’re the one who’s going to have to change your reactions and responses to your experiences; you’re the one who’s going to have to take 100% responsibility for how you feel and your condition in life; you’re the one who jumped into this uncomfortable hole, rather than being pushed or forced or tricked into it.

The “truth about it” is that no one can ever be a victim of anyone or anything at any time in any experience; likewise, there are no unwanted perpetrators. As long as you feel like you’re a victim, you have assigned power “out there” that isn’t real.

The “truth about it” is that you have no power to change the experience or anyone or anything “out there.” The only power you have as a Player is using your free will to change the way you react and respond to the holographic experiences created for you by your Infinite I.

5. Reclaim your power from the creation. “Reclaim” is Robert’s word, and I think it can be a little misleading. A Player has no power; we didn’t create the hologram to begin with. We definitely made the hologram real by assigning it power, but the power we assigned was as imaginary as the hologram itself.

“Reclaiming your power” also suggests that when you have finished with the Process, you will have more power than before you started, by taking the power back you had assigned to the hologram “out there.” This is also not true.

What I prefer to say is that you disconnect or turn off the power you assigned to the hologram, like pulling the plug or turning off a light switch. It was your judgments, beliefs, and opinions that provided the power in the first place. Think of it this way…

In the first half of the Human Game, you entered a holographic experience and flipped a switch that lit it up and made it appear real. It’s still there, fully illuminated, when you re-visit it in the second half – which is helpful, because you need it as bright as possible to clearly see the judgments, beliefs, and opinions that were your reactions and responses, and which became part of your false self, the personality construct, the ego you have been thinking is you.

When you have finished processing that hologram, you simply unplug the power source or turn the light switch off. In the beginning, it helped to visualize myself doing that.

(If there are still judgments, beliefs, and opinions associated with that holographic experience – in other words, you didn’t get them all the first time – the light won’t go off completely and your Infinite I will give you another opportunity later to run the Process on the same or similar circumstances again.)

6. Express appreciation. Expressing appreciation is perhaps the most important step. Even if you don’t “like” the experience you are having, do whatever possible (“fake it until you make it”) to express appreciation to your Infinite I for the experience – and especially thanks and appreciation to the person, place, or thing that was causing you the discomfort. After all, your Infinite I has just given you the gift of showing you where you assigned power “out there” in the past, and that’s worthy of some appreciation; and the people, places, or things that caused your discomfort have given you the gift of expertly playing a role in your holographic movie to assist you in your process of becoming a butterfly – definitely worthy of appreciation.

I realize this may be difficult in the beginning; but in fact, you may soon be wanting other people, places, or things who make you feel less than totally joyful to show up in your holograms as much and as often as they can, just so you can see where you've assigned power "out there" and "reclaim" it. (For a more complete discussion of “other people” in your holographic experiences and the roles they play, please see Chapter Twenty-Three, “Other People,” in Part Three of this book.)

If you keep doing this Process, you will eventually come to sincerely and completely appreciate each and every experience you have had, and all the people, places and things in it for the absolute perfection they represent.

* * *

Remember what you’re seeing “out there” causing you discomfort is just a total immersion movie. If you went to a play one night and were moved to tears by an emotional scene – let’s say a woman who was dying of cancer, à la Love Story – you wouldn’t blame the writer or director or the actors for making you feel bad. That’s why you went to the play in the first place, to have an “inner experience” from the “outer experience.”

If you then went to the café next door after the play and saw the actress who played the part of the dying woman, I doubt you’d blame her for causing your discomfort, or consider yourself a victim of her performance, or ask her to change the way she plays her part. To the contrary, you’d probably praise her for doing such a good job to elicit your emotional response.

That’s what Robert’s Process is all about… recognizing we are immersed in an amazing 3D holographic movie in order to have an “inner experience” from the “outer experience,” that our Infinite I is writing and directing every scene of that movie down to the smallest detail, that there are actors playing their roles in our movies to which we are reacting and responding, that any discomfort we feel is based solely on our reactions and responses and the power we assigned “out there” to the movie, that the only power we have is to change our reactions and responses if we are not happy with them, and then express our appreciation to the writer, director, and actors who did their job so well to show us the true source of our discomfort and give us the opportunity to write a new ending for ourselves.

* * *

I found Robert’s Process easy to do and very effective for the first little while inside my cocoon, and I recommend it (as I have explained it above) for all Players new to their cocoon. At least it gets you started and produces some beneficial results in letting go of judgments, beliefs, and opinions.

In this chapter and the next, I want to give you a couple examples in some detail from my own life that might be helpful in better understanding this Process. This first example contains virtually all of the elements I’ve just been discussing….

I had been in my cocoon about six months and I was living with two-hundred good friends in an intentional community in southern Portugal called Tamera. One of my jobs for the community was running an evening café, which I totally enjoyed. It was a chance to see many friends from the community I wouldn’t normally meet during the day, who would come to the café at night to relax and have fun. I loved creating a special atmosphere and energy for them, and serving them and treating them with popcorn and great music.

This café was a source of pride and pleasure for me, and I treasured it and protected it, which is why on this one particular evening I got very upset.

There was one member of the community, I’ll call her Betty, whom I had known for fifteen years, ever since the community of ZEGG in Germany. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Betty; I hardly gave her a thought. But I didn’t enjoy her company, and I honestly don’t know anyone who did. She seemed to always have this sour and angry and arrogant attitude that was simply not fun to be around. For some reason the community never kicked anyone out – at least not for being sour and angry and arrogant – so she was still there after fifteen years. Fortunately, I didn’t have to see her a lot.

However, on this particular night of my café, Betty suddenly drove her car onto the same gravel lot where I ran my café and parked it. Granted, the car was off to one side somewhat, so it didn’t really bother my guests; but it was ugly sitting there, ruining the ambiance I worked so hard to create. Besides, there was a rule against parking cars in that location.

My first reaction was to assume Betty had just parked there temporarily since her room was close by and perhaps she had to unload something and would be back soon to move her car. But when ten minutes went by and the car was still there, getting uglier by the second and infecting the entire atmosphere, I went to her room to make sure she would move it. My very polite request was met with an antagonistic, “Mind your own business!”

I was beginning to feel more and more “uncomfortable.” “Pissed” is the better word. I let another ten minutes go by and, when she hadn’t moved the car, went back to her room and ordered her with all the authority I could muster to park it where it belonged. She was in the middle of an angry diatribe about “Who was I to tell her what to do” when I turned and walked away.

She never did move the car. It sat there the entire night poisoning my carefully orchestrated café ambiance. I was too busy at the time serving drinks and popcorn to have the time and space I needed to run the Process, but I couldn’t let myself look at the car or think about Betty or I would get seriously angry.

As “luck” would have it, that particular night a female guest in the community fell and broke her leg, and we had to call an ambulance. The way Betty’s car was parked was blocking one of the main dirt roads the ambulance could use to get to the injured guest, so my indignation at her refusal to move it suddenly gained legitimacy. It was no longer just my personal desire to have the car gone from my beloved café; it was now interfering with a serious medical emergency, which is one of the reasons why there was a rule against parking there.

So I went back to Betty’s room and told her to move her car one more time before the ambulance arrived. She didn’t. That was Betty. (The ambulance eventually found another route to get to the injured patient.)

The next morning I allowed myself to let the discomfort – the anger I felt – come back up. I wanted to make Betty “wrong.” I blamed her for ruining one of my greatest pleasures at the time, my café night. I knew if she would only change what she was doing, I would be a lot happier.

So I began running Robert’s Process, or at least my version of it, and I reminded myself that the discomfort was a red flag pointing to where I had assigned power to this hologram to make it seem real; and I let the discomfort build and build inside me until I was feeling it full force.

I had long since stopped asking “Why” this had happened. I knew “Why,” or I knew the only reason that counted for anything: My Infinite I was trying to help me by showing me something. So I didn’t waste time speculating about the reason I had this experience.

Instead I reminded myself none of it was real, that this was a holographic experience created specifically for me by my Infinite I as a gift on my path toward self-realization. I had done this enough by this time that it only took five seconds before I knew with certainty this was true. I just didn’t know what was inside the gift wrapping yet.

I admitted to myself I felt like a victim, that I believed Betty had interfered with the pleasure I got from my café, and that I was judging Betty for being “wrong” for what she had done. I even had a great justification for my judgment in the form an ambulance that needed the right of way. In fact, I could have found a lot of support from other members of the community about how “right” I was and how “wrong” Betty was.

But that road leads nowhere.

Instead I decided to let go of all my judgments and stop blaming Betty, recognizing instead she was simply reading a movie script my Infinite I had written for me. This had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me. Betty’s behavior was not “wrong” at all; in fact, she had performed her part in my movie with great expertise. How could I possibly blame her for that?

I also realized I believed she should follow the rules and that it was my place to make her do that; and my opinion was that she didn’t even belong in this community, much less in my hologram! My anger then extended to the whole community for not kicking her out sooner.

The “truth of it” was that I had given Betty the power to ruin the total joy I got from running my café, and it had been my reaction and response to Betty that created my discomfort, not anything Betty did or said. More importantly, they were reactions and responses I had full control over through my own free will and could change in an instant.

So I consciously “reclaimed” all the power I had given to Betty and to the incident itself to make it real; or at least that’s the way Scheinfeld would say it. As I said earlier, I think in terms of turning off the power source to the hologram, of flipping the switch.

By the time I had done all this, and it only took a few minutes, all my discomfort was gone, and I was feeling enormous appreciation to my Infinite I for the experience – thankful for the opportunity to see where I had formed judgments, beliefs and opinions I no longer wanted to hold.

But more importantly, I was deeply and sincerely appreciative to Betty for having played her part so well, for having been willing to accept that role in my holographic experience, and for not giving in to my “authority” but playing the scene out in its entirety. In fact, I was feeling such appreciation that I wanted to go to Betty and hug her and thank her and ask her, please, to continue playing these kinds of parts in my movies so I could uncover other places where I may have judged and blamed and given away my power.

(In the end I didn’t actually go to Betty and hug and thank her. How do you say to someone, “You did such a great performance in my movie last night. Thank you, sincerely, and please continue being the sour and angry and arrogant character you’re playing so I can see if there are other situations like that where I have assigned power and made real.” I don’t think she would have understood.)

After this process, Betty never parked her car there again, although I never asked her not to; and I no longer had any discomfort being in her presence. But here’s a warning: You cannot run this Process with the hope or expectation that by doing so, your experience will change. In other words, you can’t lie to yourself and fool your Infinite I by letting go of your judgments and expressing your appreciation scheming that if you do, someone or something “out there” will change. It doesn’t work that way, and the someone or something “out there” won’t change. Your Infinite I will keep creating experiences to show you where you assigned power and left it there until you honestly and completely accept the experience for exactly what it is and your role in it. In other words, someone or something “out there” can only change when you no longer need or want anything in that holographic experience to be any different than it is; and then it doesn’t matter to you whether it changes or not!

* * *

Before we leave this chapter, let me be very clear about one thing: This process is not about forgiveness, as wonderful and spiritual as most people consider that to be. It was not about me forgiving Betty; and you are not trying to get to the point of being able to forgive someone for what they did. In most cases, forgiveness implies a judgment still exists that a person did something “wrong” for which you are forgiving them. If that’s all the farther you get, you haven’t finished the process.

On the other hand, A Course in Miracles says, ““Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin.”₄

That’s their definition of forgiveness, and a most accurate one, if everyone could understand it that way. To put it simply, when you recognize the other person never did anything to you at all for which they need to be forgiven, you will be on your way; and when you actually arrive at the point of sincerely and enthusiastically expressing your appreciation to them for what they did – for the role they played so well in your hologram – you will have arrived.

FOOTNOTES

1. Scheinfeld, Robert. Journey to the Infinite Home Transformational System – Back to reading

2. Church of Scientology International. Illustrated Tone Scale in Full – Back to reading

3. Gendlin, Eugene T. Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method – Back to reading

4. A Course in Miracles/Workbook for Students, Introduction to Part II – Back to reading

CHAPTER 14

SPIRITUAL AUTOLYSIS

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On average about a year into your cocoon time, based on the many successful results of your first-hand experiences using Robert’s Process, you will know with certainty there is no “out there” out there; that your 3D holographic total immersion movies aren’t real; that your Infinite I is creating all your experiences for you, down to the smallest detail; that you cannot be a victim of anyone or anything at any time; that if you feel any discomfort, it is solely the result of your reactions and responses to your movies, and you can run the Process in a matter of minutes – even seconds sometimes – to locate and let go of any remaining judgments, beliefs, and opinions; and that you live mainly in a state of awe and appreciation for the Game and all the Players you encounter.

That’s a really wonderful place to get to and be; and yet you feel you’re not done, that there is something left to process, that you still have unanswered questions, that you do not yet have the one true answer to “Who Am I?”, that you’re only at the point of mild contentment with your life rather than constant enthusiasm and joy, and that you continue to experience some moments of discomfort from time to time.

Although it produces some excellent results early on, I found Robert’s Process has its limitations. I know of others who reached this point as well. (For a more complete discussion of why, please see Chapter Thirty-Three, “Robert Scheinfeld,” in Part Three of this book.)

Robert’s Process can be very effective when dealing with discomfort that seems to come from “out there,” but it’s not as effective when you have reached the point where there is no longer any thought of “out there” and you are more interested in looking “in here.” That’s because judgment, beliefs, and opinions are only the tip of the iceberg; and once you’ve gotten comfortable and been successful in letting go of them, you’re ready for the next stage of your metamorphosis.

Underneath the judgments, beliefs, and opinions are the fears that led to them and the layers of the ego created as a result – the false self you thought yourself to be – that Robert’s Process simply cannot address.

At least that was true in my case.

* * *

In 2003, still inside the movie theater, I had a car accident which broke eleven bones in my neck and back, and I came within a millimeter of being paralyzed for life. One vertebra in my neck had to be taken out and replaced with a titanium cage, and I then needed six months in bed to recover.

My ex-wife had been married to her new husband about three years at that time, and his mother had also recently come to live with them. But out of their love and caring, and going way beyond any call of duty, they put a hospital bed in their living room and that’s where I spent those six months recovering. Plus, they bought a travel trailer at their own expense, set it up just a short walk from their house, and moved me in there as soon as I could walk sufficiently to get back and forth, continuing to feed and take care of me for another six months.

During that year, my ex-wife’s new husband became my best friend, and his mother treated me as if I were her son. After fifty-seven years, I finally had the kind of mother I wished for as a child, and a real brother to boot. My ex-wife’s parents, who also lived nearby, were a constant source of love and support as well. What an incredible experience! The car accident was indeed a very special gift from my Infinite I on many levels.

But how do you ever repay someone for that kind of love and caring? I felt such gratitude to my ex-wife and her husband – and to the entire family – and spent the next seven years trying to find ways to give back even a small percentage of what they had given me. This turned out to be the subject of a series of holographic experiences my Infinite I would create for me later.

Suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere – about a year and a half into my cocoon – my ex-wife and I started to have some communications problems which soon became uncomfortable for me.

To be specific, I had been my ex-wife’s scout and coach, among other things, while we were together. A big part of my relationship to her, part of my ego identity, was to assist her – at her request – in seeing when she had strayed off her own chosen path and help her get back on course.₁ Her new husband had, in fact, thanked me profusely many times for the excellent job I had done in this capacity.

Ten years later I was still attached to this ego identity and continued to play my role. By this time it had become a habit of mine to “fix, change, or improve” her when I would see she had left her path. My ego convinced me it would be a real gift to her and her husband if I once again exercised my identity as her coach and offered my assistance and support – perhaps a big enough gift to repay their love and generosity. “If I could only get her to see and understand…”

For the first time ever in our relationship, my ex-wife did not agree she had strayed off course, despite the evidence I presented; and our communication problem lasted about six months while I tried to do what I had done so well for her in the past, with zero success this time. I ran Robert’s Process very early on, leaving me with no discomfort, no emotional or mental upset on my side with her or the situation we were in. I did not blame her or judge her for anything she was saying or doing, and I no longer had any desire to fix her or improve her or change her.

But still I knew something wasn’t “right,” with me; and I needed help, something more than Robert’s Process to find it. So my Infinite I asked Robert Scheinfeld (how ironic and perfect!) to appear in my holographic experience via email and introduce me to Jed McKenna and his Enlightenment Trilogy….

“The external searching is only one part of the story. The other part is the internal part; the slow, painful sloughing away of self, layer by layer, piece by piece.”₂

I was ready to tackle some very tough layers of my ego and the fears that created them.

* * *

In Book One of his Enlightenment Trilogy, Jed introduces us to a process he calls “spiritual autolysis.” I’m going to let Jed speak for himself a lot in this chapter and the next, because he says everything so clearly, and there’s no point in my trying to paraphrase….

“Autolysis means self-digestion, and spiritual means, uh. Hell, I don’t really know. Let’s say it means that level of self which encompasses the mental, physical and emotional aspects; your royal I-ness. Put the two words together and you have a process through which you feed yourself, one piece at a time, into the purifying digestive fires…. It’s an unpleasant process…. basically like a Zen koan on steroids. All you really have to do is write the truth…. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yes, that’s all there is to it.”₃

The best description Jed gives of the actual process of spiritual autolysis is during a conversation with a student named Arthur in Book One, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing…

“Just write down what you know is true, or what you think is true, and keep writing until you’ve come up with something that is true.”

“Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter,” says Arthur.

“Sure,” I agree. “Start with something as seemingly indisputable as that, and then start examining the foundation upon which that statement is built and just keep following it down until you’ve reached bedrock, something solid, something true.”

“Pi isn’t the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter?” he asks.

“The question presupposes that there’s a circle.”

“There’s not a circle?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Is there?”

“Well, if I draw a circle…”

“I? When did you confirm the existence of an I? Draw? Have you already raced past the part where you confirmed that you are a separate physical being in a physical universe with the ability to perceive, to draw? Have you? If so, we have to switch seats.”

Arthur is thoughtful and silent for several moments. “I guess that’s what you mean by following it down. This is very confusing. I don’t even know where to start.”

“It doesn’t matter where you start, just grab a thread and start pulling. You could start by using Ramana Maharshi’s query, ‘Who am I?’ or ‘What is me?’, and then just work at it. Just try to say something true and keep at it until you do. Write and rewrite. Make it cleaner and cut out the excess and ego and follow it wherever it leads until you’re done.”

“And how long does that usually take?”

“I would think a couple of years. But when you’re done, you’re done.”

“And by done, you mean…?”

“Done.”

“Oh. Is this like journaling? Like keeping a diary?”

“Ah, good question. No. This isn’t about personal awareness or self-exploration. It’s not about feelings or insights. It’s not about personal or spiritual evolution. This is about what you know for sure, about what you are sure you know is true, about what you are that is true. With this process you tear away layer after layer of untruth masquerading as truth. Anytime you go back to read something you wrote, even if it was only yesterday, you should be surprised by how far you’ve come since then. It’s actually a painful and vicious process, somewhat akin to self-mutilation. It creates wounds that will never heal and burns bridges that can never be rebuilt and the only real reason to do it is because you can no longer stand not to.”

He lets that sink in for a few moments. “What’s the reason for writing it down? Why not just do it in your head like with koans?”

“That’s another good question. Yes, koans and mantras are done in your head. Ramana Maharshi’s ‘Who am I?’ query is done in your head. The reason for writing it down on paper or on a computer where you can see it is because the brain, unlikely as it may sound, is no place for serious thinking. Any time you have serious thinking to do, the first step is to get the whole shootin’ match out of your head and set it up someplace where you can walk around it and see it from all sides. Attack, switch sides and counter-attack. You can’t do that while it’s still in your head. Writing it out allows you to act as your own teacher, your own critic, your own opponent. By externalizing your thoughts, you can become your own guru; judging yourself, giving feedback, providing a more objective and elevated perspective.”…

“Does that make Spiritual Autolysis a path of intellect as opposed to a path of heart or a path of devotion or a path of service?”

Ugh. “Frankly, you start losing me a little bit there, Arthur.” He gives me a perplexed look. “I don’t know what all these different paths are, Arthur. Spiritual Autolysis is an intellectual endeavor, but I balk at calling it a path of intellect. It’s a process of discrimination, of unknowing what is untrue, of progressively stripping what is true. Discrimination is used in a machete-like manner for hacking one’s way through the dense underbrush of delusion, or, if you prefer, in a swordlike manner for hacking off one’s own delusion-riddled head. Intellect is used as the sword with which ego commits a slow and agonizing suicide; the death of a thousand cuts. Whether that makes it this kind of path or that kind of path doesn’t concern us here; that’s something for a student of paths to worry about. If the question stays with you then it’s something you can address for yourself in the process of Spiritual Autolysis.”₄

* * *

This was exactly what I needed to process my current experience with my ex-wife. I needed to see my emotional attachments to her and her husband, especially the tricky ones that seemed so justified by well-earned and well-deserved gratitude. I needed to write down how these attachments were defining who I believed myself to be, and look honestly at the hold my ego had on me as a result. I wanted to find out what was really true about any of this, and spiritual autolysis was a powerful tool in that process.

What I discovered, of course, was that my ego liked this role of being the coach for my ex-wife. It defined my identity, my relationship to her, especially since I was no longer her husband.

In fact, my ego liked being a coach to anyone. It gave me the identity of a teacher, a mentor, a guru of sorts. It also satisfied a belief in helping others, in trying to mitigate their pain and suffering, in offering support by exposing the inconsistencies and contradictions that were making their lives less happy than mine – none of which can ever be true, of course. Isn’t it amazing how arrogant our egos can be, thinking we know what’s best for someone else or how they should live?

It was my ego that wanted me to feel this eternal gratitude to my ex-wife and her husband – without any possibility of ever being able to pay them back – to keep me attached to this identity. That’s the way the ego survives and grows and gains power.

But it was clear the time had come for me to detach from the identity of a coach or mentor or teacher or guru to my ex-wife – and anyone and everyone else – and from the endless gratitude to her and her husband.

Detaching does not automatically mean disconnecting, however; although in this case my ex-wife finally asked that I take her and her husband off my mailing list, which I did, although I hope the disconnection is not permanent or even lengthy.

Detaching means… well, I’ll talk about it in detail in the next chapter. For now, think of the ego like an onion. Detaching is peeling off one of the layers and throwing it away. Or maybe you prefer cutting it up into little pieces, throwing it in a hot pan with some butter, and eating it with great appreciation for the flavor it gives to a hamburger or zucchini. (For more appreciation of the ego, please see Chapter Thirty-One, “The Ego,” in Part Three of this book.)

Originally, I was quite surprised when my “coaching” offers were so adamantly rejected by both my ex-wife and her husband, given our history. Now I am so extremely appreciative to both of them, for it was only through their resistance that I was able to find and let go of these ego layers. What a relief it is not to feel like playing any of those roles any more, and what a gift they gave me once again – although this time I am not bound to the ego by the gratitude.

* * *

There were many fears I discovered as well as I ran Jed’s spiritual autolysis on this incident with my ex-wife and her husband. The bottom line was that I wasn’t enjoying our conversations any more; I wasn’t having fun being involved in her dramas; and I didn’t look forward to listening to him recite conspiracy theories of government concentration camps ready to accommodate millions of Americans. The only reason I kept putting up with it was this endless gratitude.

But I was afraid to let go of her and her husband, even knowing I could never repay them no matter what I did. In addition to feeling I should feel grateful for the rest of my life, there was the fear of how it would look to others if I suddenly put an end to the endless gratitude. I was afraid of what the rest of the family would think. How ungrateful would it seem if one day I said, “You know, I am and will always be very appreciative of you and everything you did for me; but I can never pay you back, and I have to stop trying. That part of my life is over, and I no longer feel joyful or interested – or compelled by gratitude – in walking down the road you seem to be heading at the moment.”

What would my children think? Did I stand the chance of jeopardizing my identity as their father if they disapproved of my behavior with their step-mother?

I was also afraid of losing the mother I had always wanted and just recently found, and the new brother I had come to love. These layers of identity had made up for years of my dysfunctional childhood, and I cherished them.

Finally, and most importantly, I was afraid this was the last chance I would have to get my ex-wife out of the movie theater and into her cocoon, which was the “gift” I had been trying to give her. I still loved her and cared for her, and wanted her to find her way out of the drama and conflict and pain and suffering – the dreamstate she was so clearly still experiencing as a Human Adult. Of course, my ego loved this, feeling secure in its existence as long as I felt responsible for and was focusing on her spiritual evolution instead of my own.

Detachment isn’t always just from the things we don’t want or like, but also from the things we want and love.

* * *

I had to let go of the attachments to all of this, to all the fears that had created layer upon layer of my ego and formed the false belief of who I thought I was: coach, friend, father, brother, son. These were all just “characters” I played – none of which were who I really am at all, all of which are who I am not, in fact.

The fact is that every judgment I ever made in my life has attached me to that experience and formed another layer of my ego, defining who I thought I was. Every belief adopted as a result of these judgments has been false, solidifying and justifying the ego. Every opinion based on those false beliefs will turn out to be in error when viewed from a new perspective of truth.

That’s why our Infinite I gives us the opportunity to revisit, or re-live, those experiences while in the cocoon; to let go of those judgments, beliefs, opinions; to look head-on at the fears and break the attachments that have formed the false identity layers of the ego.

* * *

This is all well and good, you might say, for something as insignificant as a little emotional upset over Betty’s parked car, or a spat with your ex-wife – for the minor drama and conflicts in life. But what about real discomfort? What about physical abuse? What about a rape, domestic violence, divorce, child abuse, war, poverty, starvation, depression, severe illness, and the really difficult experiences of true pain and suffering?

The severity of the discomfort does not matter; the process is exactly the same regardless of the content of the hologram. None of it is real, no matter the intensity, whether it is a minor cut on your finger or a near-fatal car accident. It just seems real – it looks and feels real – and the more emotional or physical pain, the more real it becomes, which means the more power we have assigned to it.

That’s why I suggest starting with Robert’s Process to take the “heat” and the “reality” out of the situation, and then work your way into Jed’s spiritual autolysis, always reminding yourself that the experience has been created by your Infinite I to show you where you assigned power, to give you the opportunity to change how you react and respond, and then decide whether you want to continue living with the fears and the layers of false ego identities.

Yes, it might take a little longer to process the more extreme feelings of discomfort, but the Process itself doesn’t change. It might mean you “reclaim” some power the first time through the Process, but there’s still a lot left to go back and get the next time, or the third time, or the three-hundredth time through the experience. The “good” thing is that each time you run the Process on a particular situation and turn off some of the power associated with it, it gets less intense and therefore a little easier the next time.

Eventually, within a couple years, you will do all of this with ease and excitement, appreciating the experiences of discomfort – if they come up – as an opportunity to locate and process the last remnants of judgment and fear, but living more as a “witness” to your own life.

* * *

In Book Three of his Enlightenment Trilogy, called Spiritual Warfare, Jed mentions “witnessing” in a conversation with a teenage student, Maggie….

“Ultimately, the only spiritual practice is observation; seeing things the way they really are. That’s what Spiritual Autolysis is; a tool to help us do that, to see more clearly, to use our brains the best we can. In witnessing, you want to take a step back from yourself so you’re not just living your life, you’re also observing it. Not in reflection, like a diary, but as it’s happening; in real time. Like right now, I’m sitting here talking with you, but I’m also in this witnessing mode of impartial observer. I am not fully in character, I’m also an audience member. I’m aware that I’m acting on a stage and I am, somewhat disinterestedly, monitoring my performance.”

She looks confused but eager. “How do I do it?” she asks.

“Well, in a way, you’re already doing it, except your witness is kind of unfocused. She’s bored, hungry, aggravated, muffled. You want to bring her into focus, sit her down and have her pay attention.”

“Her? Her who?”

“The little voice in the back of your mind. You know what it’s like when you’re bored, and in the back of your mind you’re thinking about something else? You’re not fully present, your mind is somewhere else; wandering, daydreaming.… Daydreaming is a very good word for it because it suggests that we’re asleep while we’re awake, which is exactly the point. We want to transfer our primary awareness out of the character we’re playing and into the actor that’s playing the character. We want to accentuate that distinction to help us stop blending the character we play with the actor playing the character. We want to take up primary residence in the actor instead of the character we’re portraying. Does that make sense?”

“I don’t know. You mean like being self-conscious all the time?”

“Yes, but in an impartial sense, not in a judgmental sense. When you have internal voices holding imaginary conversations or worrying that you wore the wrong blouse, those are character elements too. The actor can just sit back and watch all that. In this way you can observe yourself just like you observe anyone else, except with a better view.”

“I’m not sure I can do that.”

“Of course you can, it just sounds weird.”₅

Sounds to me a lot like the Fair Witness in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, for those of you who know the reference; and as far as I am concerned, witnessing is an advanced process that takes a lot of training and discipline and is probably not suitable for the early stages in a cocoon.

But it’s how you begin to live all the time toward the end of your metamorphosis.…

“There’s nothing to it except observation, awareness, vigilance. Wakefulness. First you learn to do it, to have this detached awareness; you do it consciously, a little at a time, just to get the hang of it. Practice witnessing other people to get the idea. Watch them, wonder about them, deconstruct and reverse-engineer them, then just watch yourself the way you’ve been watching others. Then you start doing it more and more until it becomes second nature and you’re almost always in the witnessing mode and you see your own character from the same impersonal perspective as you see other people.”₆

FOOTNOTES

1. Another pun, because my ex-wife’s “own chosen path” was A Course in Miracles – Back to reading

2. McKenna, Jed. The Enlightenment Trilogy – Back to reading

3. Ibid. – Back to reading

4. Ibid. – Back to reading

5. Ibid. – Back to reading

6. Ibid. – Back to reading

CHAPTER 15

DETACHING & “DESIRELESSNESS”

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I said in the last chapter that “detachment isn’t always just from the things we don’t want or like, but also from the things we want and love.”

That may sound like you have to forsake everything in order to become a butterfly, which would make becoming a butterfly a lot less attractive to many people. But it’s not true. So let me explain “detachment” a little more; and, as usual, let’s first look at what “detachment” is not….

“Detachment,” sometimes called “non-attachment” or “desirelessness,” is a concept that can be found in all the major religions inside the movie theater; and, as is necessary, it has been altered and twisted so that it doesn’t work for the Human Adults who try it.

“Detachment as release from desire and consequently from suffering is an important principle, or even ideal, in the Bahá'í Faith, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Jainism, Kabbalah and Taoism…. In Buddhist and Hindu religious texts the opposite concept is expressed as upādāna, translated as "attachment.” Attachment, that is the inability to practice or embrace detachment, is viewed as the main obstacle towards a serene and fulfilled life. Many other spiritual traditions identify the lack of detachment with the continuous worries and restlessness produced by desire and personal ambitions.”₁

“One of the most important teachings of Zen Buddhism is non-attachment. The teaching of non-attachment may be easy to understand, but it is not easy to practice. Nevertheless, it is very essential to cultivate non-attachment if we are to live a serene and happy life in a world of constant change…. Our world is a world of desire. Every living being comes forth from desire and endures as a combination of desires. We are born from the desire between of our father and mother. Then, when we emerge into this world, we become infatuated with many things, and become ourselves well-springs of desire. Through desire we give rise to attachments. For every desire there is a corresponding attachment, namely, to the object of desire. For example, we are most conspicuously attached to our bodies. When someone threatens the body, we grow anxious and try to protect it. We relish physical comforts and the enjoyment of the senses. Thus, we are strongly attached to the body. But if we consider this attachment, we will see that it is a potential source of suffering.”₂

One of the main reasons this concept doesn’t work is that it is based on judgment – the judgment that desire is “bad” and desirelessness is “good.” It also contains resistance to desire; and as many others have pointed out, to desire desirelessness is a desire in itself.

The truth is there is nothing “wrong” with desires and no reason to resist them or try to live without them. We are free to desire anything and everything we want. Our desires make life interesting and exciting. The problem only starts when we become attached to having those desires fulfilled. In other words, you cannot be attached to realizing or achieving your desires, so that whether you realize or achieve your desires or not has no effect on your happiness or state of mind. It is not the desire that needs to be detached from; it’s the attachment to its fulfillment.

I can well imagine the Buddha knew this and taught this, but his followers either didn’t get it, or couldn’t do it. So they made “desire” the focus of detachment rather than the attachment to the outcome of the desire. As quoted above…

“For every desire there is a corresponding attachment, namely, to the object of desire.”

No, no, no! The attachment is to the fulfillment of the desire, not the desire itself! All suffering comes from being attached to the fulfillment of the desire, and being disappointed when that desire is not realized despite all the meditation, prayers, visualization and hard work. The suffering is not because of the desire itself.

Jed McKenna says it very simply…

“All attachments to the dreamstate are made of energy. That energy is called emotion. All emotions, positive and negative, are attachments.”₃

I have any number of desires I’m not attached to. For example, I have a strong desire to build a 65-foot wingsail catamaran₄ where I can spend my days as a butterfly sailing the oceans, scuba diving, and enjoying the company of the whales and dolphins. But I am not attached to having that desire fulfilled; that will depend entirely on what my Infinite I wants me to experience. I also don’t have the catamaran as a plan or a goal or an agenda, nor am I doing anything to try to make it happen other than what excites me in the moment. I simply have fun with the desire, dream about it, enjoy drawing designs of the boat, and am curious to see if the ripples of my universe flow in that direction.

“No spiritual teaching that talks about non-attachment has any right to. None of them are talking about this. ‘Cultivate a sense of detachment,’ they say. A sense of detachment? What planet are they from? They have no idea whatsoever what detachment means. They seem to be talking about detaching from your desire for a BMW or for Mr. Right. Try detaching from what you love! From what you are! From everything that characterizes your membership in the human race! And that’s just for starters.”₅

* * *

Very briefly, you can consider yourself “attached” to someone or something when that someone or something can affect the way you feel. In other words…

…you are attached to another person if something they do or say determines your happiness or lack of it.

…you are attached to something when it has to be “right” in order for you to feel “right.”

…you are attached to a false layer of the ego when it defines who you think you are.

The detachment we’re most interested in is detaching from these layers of the ego that have led to a misconception of who we really are, and that detachment happens automatically as we do our spiritual autolysis and discover who we are not. We don’t have to actively pursue or practice detachment; those layers of false identity simply fall away, stripped off the onion and left for trash. As we find out who we are not on our way to finding out who we really are, we detach from those identities in the process. That is detachment.

“You can forget about non-attachment…. You’re putting the cart before the horse. Non-attachment isn’t a key to liberation, it’s a by-product.”₆

* * *

One of the many wonderful gifts I have been given by other Players in my life happened when I was fifty-five years old and fell in love with a woman who would soon start to act like my mother. For the first time in my life, she allowed me to closely examine the attachments I still had to both my parents, even though they were already dead at the time. Needless to say, these were less than pleasant memories. In fact, I cried almost every day for a solid year as I processed this part of my childhood.

In addition to loving her, I became very attached to this woman, to the point that how I felt was totally dependent on what she did or said every minute of every day. It was so bad that if she didn’t kiss me exactly right when we said goodbye in the morning, I was devastated and my day was ruined.

It was the Al-Anon program₇ that helped me break these attachments. Al-Anon doesn’t teach that you have to leave an alcoholic you love, but that you can detach from them and the effects of their alcoholism, still love them, still live with them, and still be happy regardless of anything they do or say. Once I was able to detach from my parents and my fiancée, my happiness was no longer dependant on anything she said or did, or how she kissed me, and I grew to love this woman unconditionally.

So when I talk about “detaching,” it doesn’t mean you have to give up anything except your attachment. It doesn’t mean you can’t continue to love someone; it means you can no longer be attached to that love, or to that someone either. It doesn’t mean you can’t continue to want nice things in your life; it means your joy in life can’t be attached to having those nice things. It doesn’t mean you can no longer find total pleasure in your favorite meal with a good glass of wine; it means your happiness can’t be dependent on whether you get it or not.

It means letting go of the cave and your fellow prisoners in order to experience what it’s like outside the cave. It means letting go of the movie theater and your fellow Human Children and Human Adults in order to find out what is true and who you really are.

“The process of awakening looks like it’s about destroying ego, but that’s not really accurate. You never completely rid yourself of ego–the false self–as long as you’re alive, and it’s not important that you do. What matters is the emotional tethers that anchor us to the dreamstate; that hold us in place and make us feel that we’re a part of something real. We send out energetic tendrils from the nexus of ego like roots to attach ourselves to the dreamstate, and to detach from it we must sever them. The energy of an emotion is our lifeforce, and the amount of lifeforce determines the power of the emotion. Withdraw energy from an emotion and what’s left? A sterile thought. A husk. In this sense, freeing ourselves from attachment is indeed the process of awakening, but such attachments aren’t what we have, they’re what we are.”₈

Think of it this way… in order to become a butterfly, a caterpillar has to give up the attachment to its body, the feel of the earth as it crawled along, the leaves it enjoyed eating, the 4000 muscles it possessed, the hair it used as protection, and so on. But letting go of those attachments is well worth it when the end result is a butterfly with its bright colors, light body, wings to fly, and the magnificent taste of flower nectar.

Being a caterpillar is a wonderful experience; being a butterfly is total freedom.

* * *

In Book Two of his Enlightenment Trilogy, called Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, Jed McKenna includes the spiritual autolysis writings of one of his students, named Julie….

“My mind is haunted, my thoughts are haunted. I am haunted; possessed, plagued with demons! My mother is here! My unborn children are here. My future is here, my dreams. Everyone who means anything to me, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, is here. How do they all fit? How could I have not seen them right away? Of course they’re here. This is where they are. My attic is me, there is no place else. Whether or not they have physical counterparts out in the real world is meaningless to me, just as the fact that I might be a real person in the real world is meaningless to them. Perception is reality. I am possessed by my own perceptions; not by things and people, future and past, but by my perceptions of them. These are my connections, my attachments. Maybe all I really am is the sum of all these connections, these fearful longings and graspings. What is an attachment anyway? It’s a belief, that’s all. A strong one maybe, but just a belief. And yes, Jed, I know: No belief is true. The pen is mightier than the sword, isn’t it Jed? You wrote about a sword, but that was just a metaphor. It’s the pen. Spiritual Autolysis is the power of the pen, which is the power of the mind, the power to see, to see clearly. Yes, I will kill these people inhabiting my mind. I will kill them by clearly seeing the attachments that keep them here. I can see those attachments now. I can see the emotions at work and I am starting to see them for what they are. I am starting to understand of what stuff this prison of self is really made.”₉

* * *

I hope it is clear now what you are going to do as you go through daily life in your cocoon, first processing any physical or emotional discomfort that arises in your interactions with other people and the world “out there,” and then searching to find and let go of the false knowledge and emotional attachments that have formed layer upon layer of your ego, defining who you thought you were, until you discover who you really are.

“The external searching is only one part of the story. The other part is the internal part; the slow, painful sloughing away of self, layer by layer, piece by piece. Spiritual self-debridement. Some layers of selfhood just fall away, some tear off in long strips or flabby hunks, and some have to be meticulously, pain-stakingly; surgically removed. Everything I had become in decades of life I now had to unbecome. All I really was was belief, so everything I believed I now had to unbelieve. My new world was cold and bright and honest, but my old mind was still full of a lifetime’s accumulation of belief and opinion and false knowledge and emotional attachment–all the noxious debris and toxic waste that make up the ego–and it all had to go. That’s a process and it takes time. The world might be annihilated in a flash, but self takes a little longer to burn away. There’s no bomb for that. There’s no pretty Latin phrase or Sanskrit mantra that annihilates self quickly or painlessly. There’s no realization or insight or epiphany that wipes away the false self in a flash. Those who claim to have awakened in a flash are the most deluded of all…

“It should now be easy to understand that a true and complete spiritual teaching can be conveyed in three words [Who Am I?], while those that require entire libraries of books and legions of graybearded scholars to decrypt them can succeed only in producing ever more darkness and confusion. It should now be clear that there are no cases of instant enlightenment, that awakening is not the result of a single epiphany, but of a long, arduous journey wherein every step itself is a long, arduous journey. It should now be obvious that all dogma, beliefs, doctrines and philosophies are strictly dreamstate phenomenon with no independent existence in truth. It should now be easy to look at any teacher or teaching, at any book, at any spiritual or religious assertion, and to instantly know its exact and certain value. It should now be easy to look at every internal thought, belief and emotion and know without the possibility of error what is real and what is imagined. It should now be clear that there is no room for debate or opinion with regard to what is true and what is false. The distinction is absolute: Truth exists. Untruth does not.”₁₀

* * *

Robert’s Process and Spiritual Autolysis. I’m personally not aware of any other processes from other scouts that I know for a fact will work in your transformation into a butterfly. But, of course, you are always free to come up with your own process if you think you’ve found something “better.” I would caution you to remember that any process developed inside the movie theater will not work in the cocoon, simply because it’s based on incorrect premises (i.e., the movies are real). Now the opposite of everything is true, so you would be wise not to try to bring any process into the cocoon with you.

Furthermore, any process you come up with inside the cocoon is going to have to include certain specific elements, like…

…acknowledging there is no objective, independent reality “out there” and the experience you’re processing isn’t real

…locating and letting go of all judgments, beliefs, opinions, and fears

…withdrawing, disconnecting, or switching off any power assigned to a person, place, or thing within the hologram

…expressing appreciation to the people, places, and things in your hologram for their role in your process, and to your Infinite I for its creations

…identifying and detaching from the layers of the ego that were created while in the movie theater, always with the purpose of finding the true answer to “Who Am I?”

In addition, any process must be done unilaterally and alone; that is, it cannot depend on anyone or anything else outside of you saying or doing anything at all. You initiate and run the process regardless of what anyone else does in your experience. No one else has to change anything; you just change your own reaction or response.

It’s also worth repeating and emphasizing that while you can do Robert’s Process in your head, spiritual autolysis will only work well if you actually write it down. The problem with doing stuff in your head when it comes to dealing with your fears and the layers of your ego is that the ego, threatened with its annihilation, will begin fighting back, finding ways to justify your fears, fooling you into thinking the layer of ego you found is true and necessary to hang on to. So if you’re going to try to come up with your own process, you will have to find a way to get it out of your head, establishing some physical distance between you and what you are looking at.

Who knows? You might, indeed, come up with a new process that can benefit others as well as you scout a new path across the Rockies. Then you can write a book about it! Meanwhile, the processes from Robert Scheinfeld and Jed McKenna now have proven track records, so we know they work; and that’s saying something. In just two years, I have seen the kind of results using this combination of Robert’s Process and Jed’s spiritual autolysis that many people spend lifetimes in meditation and visualization and still never achieve. As they say in some 12-Step programs, it works if you work it, and it’s worth it.

* * *

If you apply yourself diligently and faithfully to whatever workable process you choose, I can tell you where you will end up.

You will drop all judgments of everyone and everything. You will see nothing any more as “good” or “bad,” “better” or “worse,” “right” or “wrong,” “good” or “evil.”

You will let go of all the beliefs you ever held, including the belief of who you thought you were.

Your opinions will cease to exist and not be replaced.

You will eliminate fear from your life, including the fear of death and non-existence, knowing everything is perfect exactly the way it is and there is never anything to be afraid of.

In short, you will become…

…nothing – a fully realized no-self,₁₁ as others have called it – nothing but joy and appreciation and serenity of being.

“Truly I have attained nothing from total enlightenment,” said the Buddha.

A butterfly is nothing; and like the butterfly, you will finally be free – free of judgments and beliefs and opinions and false knowledge and ego attachments; free of drama and conflict and pain and suffering; “free to fly, fly away, high away, bye bye.”

FOOTNOTES

1. Wikipedia – Detachment – Back to reading

2. Thich Thien-An. Zen Philosophy, Zen Practice, pp. 104-112 – Back to reading

3. McKenna, Jed. The Enlightenment Trilogy – Back to reading

4. Cachalote.org – Back to reading

5. Julie’s spiritual autolysis in The Enlightenment Trilogy – Back to reading

6. McKenna, Jed. Ibid. – Back to reading

7. Wikipedia – Al-Anon – Back to reading

8. McKenna, Jed. Id. – Back to reading

9. Julie’s spiritual autolysis in Ibid. – Back to reading

10. McKenna, Jed. Id. – Back to reading

11. Giles, James. The No-self theory: Hume, Buddhism, and Personal Identity - “The no-self theory lets the self lie where it has fallen. This is because the no-self theory is not a theory about the self at all. It is rather a rejection of all such theories as inherently untenable.” – Back to reading

CHAPTER 16

JUDGMENT

Back to the Table of Contents

After hours upon hours of spiritual autolysis, I finally wrote something that is true:

Judgment is the source of all pain and suffering.

This might only be true for me, but I doubt it.

If you’re like I, and many other people, you’ve had a personal experience confirming this truth you might not have recognized….

Have you ever thought you cut yourself with a sharp knife, maybe while slicing vegetables, but you weren’t sure; so you stopped slicing and took a look, and then you saw the blood. When did the pain start? Not until you saw the blood and judged the injury to be painful. The cut itself caused no pain until you looked at it.

There are many other examples of people not experiencing very painful injuries because they were focused on something else, like saving a child from a car accident; and only when they stopped to take a look at themselves – or when a doctor or nurse had them focus on their own injuries – did they feel any pain. This, of course, is one of the theories behind firewalking and other popular motivational ceremonies.

Normally, however, we judge an experience to be painful – either physically or mentally or emotionally – as soon as it happens, or maybe even before it happens. We also go through life pre-judging that any number of different experiences would be painful if we should ever encounter them. But it is the judgment that creates the pain and suffering and not the experience itself.

All holographic experiences created by all Infinite I’s for all Players are completely neutral. It is only the Player’s judgmental reactions and responses to those experiences that cause the drama and conflict and pain and suffering.

There, in a nutshell, is the answer to the age-old question of why “God” would create pain and suffering in the world. “He” doesn’t. “We” do, by our reactions and responses to totally neutral holographic experiences.

* * *

Inside the movie theater, the lives of the Human Children are based entirely on judgment. They thrive on the concept; they literally cannot imagine living without it, and some object strenuously and even get angry at the very suggestion. How could one possibly survive without judging everything to be “good” or “bad,” “right” or “wrong,” “better” or “worse”? Of course, they can hardly imagine living without the drama and conflict, either; nor do they seem to want to.

All the world’s major religions and spiritual philosophies have judgment at their core as well. “God” is the supreme judge, for example, and “He” will judge you and your thoughts and actions to determine whether you will have an eternal life of bliss or damnation.

All social mores (“any given society's particular norms, virtues or values,”₁ or “conformity to the rules of right conduct”₂) are based on judgment of what is “right” or “wrong” behavior; and we have set up “judges” to make those determinations in court.

But as Human Children make their way to the back of the movie theater, after a while some of them start to question judgment as a concept. Perhaps it’s not so “good,” so “right,” so “spiritual” to be so judgmental of other people. However, not even the Human Adults talk in any serious way about giving up judgment entirely.

All of this is totally understandable and perfect, since judgment is the glue that keeps the illusion going in the first half of the Human Game.

Letting go of judgment entirely is perhaps the most radical step any human being can take, which is why this book is subtitled, “A New & Radical Approach to Spiritual Evolution.” It is also a most joyful way to live, for without judgment all experiences “out there” are seen as perfect and nothing needs to be changed, fixed, or improved.

Now that you’re in the cocoon, I’m suggesting it’s time to let go of judgment altogether if you want to play the second half of the Game and complete your metamorphosis into a butterfly. So let’s take a closer look at “judgment” itself.

Like “consciousness,” apparently it’s not easy to define “judgment” simply and precisely. Here’s what the American Heritage Dictionary says (taking out the legal and religious definitions):

1. The formation of an opinion after consideration or deliberation

2. The mental ability to perceive and distinguish relationships; discernment

3. The capacity to form an opinion by distinguishing and evaluating

4. The capacity to assess situations or circumstances and draw sound conclusions; good sense

5. An opinion or estimate formed after consideration or deliberation, especially a formal or authoritative decision

6. An assertion of something believed.₃

…and here’s what the Merriam-Webster Dictionary says:

1. A formal utterance of an authoritative opinion

2. The process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing

3. A proposition stating something believed or asserted.₄

At first glance, you might say these definitions have nothing to do with “right” or “wrong,” “better” or “worse,” “good” or “bad,” since those particular words are hardly mentioned. But take a closer look….

“Drawing sound conclusions” requires a judgment that there are “unsound conclusions.” Having “good sense” requires a judgment of there being “bad sense.”

“Distinguishing relationships,” “evaluating,” “comparing” all imply and require a “comparison” – usually between “right and wrong,” “good and bad,” "better or worse," or “good and evil.”

Let’s also talk about what judgment is not. Saying someone is fat, for example, is not a judgment if it is a true statement of fact. It becomes a judgment if there is the slightest belief the person is “wrong” for being fat, or needs to fix, change, or improve something about their “fatness.” Unfortunately, it’s very easy for the ego to try to hide and justify a judgment by claiming it is really just a factual observation; so in the early stages of the cocoon it is often wise to treat all thoughts and statements like this as judgmental.

The truth is that we are all taught from a very young age to be judgmental; that is, to form a belief and opinion about someone or something by deciding first which is “better or worse.” In fact, we’re taught it’s “good” to have “good judgment,” and to know the difference between these dichotomies.

This is called “duality – the state or quality of being two or in two parts.”₅

We all live in a state of duality as long as we are inside the movie theater.

* * *

If “duality” is “the state or quality of being two or in two parts” – the dichotomies of “right and wrong,” “good and bad,” “better and worse,” “good and evil” – then living without judgment, without dichotomies, should be called “non-duality.” However, that word has been taken to mean something else by a lot of different groups inside the movie theater. In fact, non-duality seems to have become the latest New Age fad, although it’s been around for a long time, beginning with the Upanishads (“advaita”) through ancient Greece to Buddhism and Yoga and Zen.

Apparently it has more to do with “Oneness,” or monism (“reality is a unified whole and all existing things can be ascribed to or described by a single concept or system₆)….

“I no longer see myself as a separate individual living in a world of separate objects but feel more like a wave belonging to the one ocean of energy. There is a non-dualistic view of the world that has replaced the previously held, vastly smaller self-identity. Dropping the concept of being a separate self caused an energetic expansion from the limited boundaries of the body outwards into everything. A child-like joy and wonder has replaced the adult critic. Somehow it is recognized that life’s essence is a single unity.”₇

I had trouble getting my head around that one since I don’t speak New Age. (We’ll talk more about this in Chapter Twenty-Five, “Are We All One?”, in Part Three of this book.) But then I ran across….

“Nonduality is a hard concept to grasp at first because the mind is trained to make distinctions in the world, and nondualism is the rejection of distinction.”₈

The rejection of distinction… Hooray! I thought. Looks like someone gets it... and then he added….

“Not to say that all differences are eliminated, merely transformed into relationships.”₉

Oops, sorry, I don’t get it. What does that mean? Where are the lines talking about our daily judgments, which themselves are relationships between “good” and “bad,” etc.

Then I discovered there are thousands upon thousands of pages of books and other stuff written about non-duality. Apparently it is quite a difficult subject to grasp and explain.

But I don’t see the problem or the need for all these books. What is there to explain? Give up judgment, let go of the dichotomies, stop living in duality. End of story.

Well, if we can’t call the state of living in non-judgment “non-duality,” what can we call it? Unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with any really cool term, so I settled on “neutrality” for now.

* * *

It seems the feeling we get the longer we remain a Human Adult – that deep-down wondering whether being so judgmental is such a “good” thing after all – has some basis in truth. Thanks to quantum physics and the Human Game model, we now know there really is nothing to judge. The holographic movies we call our lives are not real, so what good does it do to judge them? The experiences we have, created for us by our own Infinite I down to the smallest detail, are perfect exactly as they are and totally neutral, so what’s to judge? And who are we to think we have the ability or the authority to decide what is “right” or “wrong” anyway, and on what basis?

No, spirituality is not required any more in order to give up judgment; you don’t have to “believe” it’s “better” to be non-judgmental. Although it might sound very radical, once you truly understand how our holographic universe works, letting go of all judgment is simply the next logical step.

Many people, when they get to this point, can’t go any further. “It’s absolutely necessary,” they say, “to know the difference between right and wrong. Without judgment, someone could do anything they wanted and the world would be in chaos.”

My first response is to ask, “How do you think we’ve done so far with judgment?” Isn’t it judgment that has led to wars, violence, persecution, discrimination, inquisitions, witch hunts, jealousy, divorce, murder, torture, oppression, and a whole list of other traditional human activities?

It’s true we’ve been told and taught and believed for the entire first half of the Human Game that judgment is absolutely necessary; and rightfully so, because it was essential for the first half to work. But just like we finally discovered the Earth is not flat, nor is it the center of our solar system, it’s time to recognize our own judgment is the basic cause of our resistance to our experiences and therefore all of our pain and suffering. The opposite of everything is true: It’s the judgment that causes the chaos, not the lack of it!

Besides, “someone could do anything they wanted and the world would be in chaos” is a statement that assigns power “out there” and ignores the fact that the “someone” and the “world” referred to are part of your individual and unique holographic experience, and nothing more. They have no independent, objective reality.

I ran across this essay on the Internet written in strictly Christian terms by someone who’s clearly not an “expert” in anything (like me), and maybe his phrasing can help others understand this better….

“God is all-loving, so there cannot be a favored mode of conduct (or thought) in the eyes of God. If there is no favored mode of thought and conduct, then all thought and action must be allowed by God. Therefore there is no universal standard of thought or conduct, only personal ones. If all thought and action are allowed, there can be no "right" way or "wrong" way. There cannot be any judgment of thought or action, otherwise there are conditions placed on thought and action. If there are no conditions placed on thought and action by the Creator, then there is no right or wrong! Right and wrong must then be a human concept, not a universal one. Jesus said: 'Resist not Evil' (Matthew 5:39) Jesus understood universal law. There is no evil, only contrast and diversity of thought and conduct. Evil, just like right and wrong, is a judgment, usually based in fear, placed upon the thoughts and actions of others. The more something is resisted, the more energy is supplied to it, and the larger and more powerful it becomes.”₁₀

* * *

Speaking of Christianity, one of the biggest “hints” and “clues” that letting go of judgment is the next radical step for human beings is in plain sight in the first Book of the Holy Bible…

“And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”₁₁

Please note that in the middle of the Garden of Eden there was not just one tree, but two trees: the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Then God created man and woman…

“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”₁₂

Please note that there was no judgment from the man or woman about their nakedness at this point. Unfortunately, this lack of shame didn’t last long. A snake convinced the woman, who then convinced the man, to eat some fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil…

“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”₁₃

Eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil marked the beginning of judgment for the human race. Not only did the man and woman judge that being naked was now something to be ashamed of and to hide, but they also judged that they had done something wrong. From this point forward, life on Earth would be full of the dichotomies of “good and evil,” “right and wrong,” “better and worse,” and it remains that way today.

So much for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which is just another name for the Tree of Judgment.

What about the Tree of Life? What was its effect on man when he ate from it?

Unfortunately, according to the Bible, God drove man out of the Garden of Eden before he could eat from the Tree of Life, leaving the human race to live its entire existence thus far in judgment.

“Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.”₁₄

That’s how the Bible begins. But how does it end?

From the last Book of the Bible, “Revelation”…

“To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”₁₅

So mankind is finally going to get to eat from the Tree of Life, if he “overcometh.” But “overcometh” what?

In its context, the meaning is clear: “overcometh” judgment, “overcometh” what started with eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Book of Revelation is not about the end of the world, or even the final battle between Good and Evil that Good wins (because it doesn’t); and although it is usually talked about as “Armageddon,” that word only appears once in the entire book (at Revelation 16:16) and probably refers to an actual location some sixty miles north of Jerusalem.₁₆

Instead, the Book of Revelation is about the realization (the "revelation") that “good” and “evil” are judgments and the battle is to let go of both of them. In fact, the Bible can be seen not only as the story of mankind’s evolution, but as the storyline of a single individual (but that metaphor would fill another book in itself).

Or, if you prefer the poet Rumi:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field₁₇.”

You’ll recall that The Field is defined as “a field of all possibility₁₈” – not just possibilities that are “right” in someone’s judgment, but all possibilities. It is from this Field that an Infinite I creates an experience for its Player, and considering its source (The Field), that experience cannot be “right” or “wrong” either.

* * *

You might be thinking I am falling into my own trap and judging “judgment” to be “wrong.” Not so. Judgment was the perfect tool to play the first half of the Human Game, for it created the maximum amount of limitation. It simply doesn’t work in the second half. It is part of the caterpillar whose “larval structures are broken down.”

“But… but… but,” you say, “how can I look around at the horrible things going on in the world – crime, poverty, disease, starvation, destruction of the Earth, war, violence, child abuse, domestic abuse, and so on – and say those things are okay, that they’re ‘neutral,’ that I’m not supposed to judge them,? I don’t want those things in my life, or anyone else’s for that matter. Where’s your heart? Where’s your compassion for the pain and suffering of others?”

Good questions – too good to pass over lightly in this chapter. So if you are really having trouble getting past this point, I recommend you read Chapter Thirty-Two, “Compassion,” in Part Three of this book, and then come back here to continue.

As far as “not wanting those things in your own life,” that’s called “resistance,” which we will discuss very soon.

* * *

It had been a long time since I had felt any discomfort at all. I was simply appreciating life with great joy, living on the Mediterranean coast of Spain and writing this book.

Then, as I was working on this particular chapter, I mentioned to a good friend a news item that Spain was trying to outlaw the Muslim burqa as France had recently done. I was amazed when he responded with full and unequivocal support for this, and then launched into a list of judgmental opinions about the burqa, Muslim men, Islam, and religion in general. I had listened patiently to other similarly judgmental opinions and beliefs on different topics over the last month, as I knew he was deep into his own process and these things would naturally come up; but this was more than I expected.

I had three immediate reactions: incredulity, disappointment, and sadness.

When I first met this friend, he was an angry, arrogant, highly opinionated and depressed man, with a very big and stubborn ego, but a huge and generous heart and a willingness to learn and grow. I say all that as an observation and none of it as a judgment, since I didn’t think he was “wrong” for being that way and had no need or desire for him to change; besides, I was exactly that way myself while a Human Adult inside the movie theater. But I witnessed many changes in him over the past year of our friendship, mainly as a result of his studying the work of Robert Scheinfeld, reading all three of Jed McKenna’s books, and numerous conversations we had on the subject of the holographic universe and becoming a butterfly. I really could not believe what I was hearing this time, since he seemed totally comfortable with these opinions and showed no sign of recognizing their fully judgmental basis or the need to process them if he truly wanted to live in neutrality.

For about fifteen seconds I did judge him for this incident and wanted him to change, but quickly remembered he, too, was only reading a script my own Infinite I had written for me, and that his thinking and behavior were indeed perfect – which meant I had to run the Process on my own discomfort and do my spiritual autolysis on it.

I saw clearly that my disappointment came from the thought – and fear – that I really was alone. My friend, in his interest in self-realization, had given me hope that it was possible for friends to go through this process together, to support each other, to even form a community of cocoons, and then later butterflies. We had spent hours talking about building a catamaran together and inviting others to sail with us for week-long workshops to get a taste of what it was like to live in non-judgmental neutrality. Even though I knew making plans like these was pointless – that my Infinite I was in charge of creating all my experiences and not me – I totally enjoyed the daydreaming and loved the camaraderie. But how, I thought, could I continue talking like that – talking about providing an environment of non-judgment for others – with a man who was still justifying his own judgments.

My sadness was based on the question – and fear – that this whole subject was too much for anyone to really “get” if he didn’t get at least that much after a year of working with me on a daily basis; and that I may be totally wasting my time writing this book. I imagined Jed McKenna looking at him and saying that Maya was winning the war for his ego – that most people don’t make it through the cocoon stage – and sadly wondered what would happen to him if that were true.

“I can’t go back, can I?” asked Neo.

“No,” Morpheus answered.

* * *

So I ran Robert’s Process on all this emotional discomfort, and then I used spiritual autolysis to expose the underlying fears. This is where I found layers of my own ego, one of them still thinking this book might have an impact on someone else, rather than just being my scouting report; another layer of ego, despite what I told other people and all evidence to the contrary, still feeling arrogant enough to think it just might be possible to help each other as friends through this process.

I had to let go of my attachment to the boat and the future it represents; I had to let go of my attachment to this book and any result it may or may not have for anyone else; and I had to let go of my attachment to my friend’s own spiritual progress toward becoming a butterfly. After all, there must be a lot of different routes one can take over the Rockies to get to the Pacific Ocean, and I wouldn’t – and couldn’t – judge which way was “right” for my friend. I have to trust his Infinite I knows what’s best for him a lot better than I do, and the fact I would like him to take the same route I did just because I think it’s safer or easier than the one he appears to be taking has no relevance.

I silently expressed my appreciation to my friend and let go of it all – the boat, the camaraderie, the ego that still wanted to be a good enough writer that other people would understand what I was saying and might be able to use it successfully in their own lives.

In this case, I didn’t have to disconnect from my friend at all. All I had to do was let go of my own attachments and layers of ego, and then he was free to be who he was as well, without needing to be who I wanted him to be.

There’s another possibility I had to consider too, that my friend really does understand neutrality, but he had to “play dumb” so I could have the experience I needed. He might wake up and know exactly what neutrality is and means, and wonder how he could have possibly said those things today. That’s what friends can do for each other – play the difficult and dangerous roles in their movies, giving each other the special gifts that may not be possible from anyone else.

As Human Children and Human Adults inside the movie theater, we lived our entire lives in judgment, in duality. It’s not going to be easy to change that pattern, and it probably won’t happen quickly; and you are going to be the one who has to spot your own judgments that need to be processed if you want to become a butterfly.

* * *

Sometimes this can be very difficult. Sometimes the ego, sensing a real threat to its continued existence, will try anything and everything to slow you down or divert you; and sometimes that takes the form of some very inviting detours from the path with some intriguing logic whispered in your ear. For example, after a year of processing in his cocoon, one friend was about to enter his “dark night of the soul,” getting close to a powerful layer of his ego which he would then detach if he continued in that direction. He was having a lot of emotional discomfort, and his ego was able to convince him to stop doing any kind of process and take a “detour.” So he started challenging the theory of the “consciousness model” itself – not by testing it, which is always appropriate, but by intellectually arguing with it, as if by proving some part of it “wrong” he could escape processing his anger and judgments. But there never is any escape; the way out is the way through.

If this model is anywhere close to the truth, unless he finds a new route across the Rocky Mountains I’m not aware of, this friend will most likely have to pick up where he left off and then face what he could not face the first time. But there’s nothing “wrong” with that, with taking a break for a while, with standing still and regrouping and gathering new strength, like stopping on the way up Mt. Everest and resting at a base camp, getting used to the altitude and the cold. But why not simply admit that’s what you want to do and not give the ego additional power by listening to its diversions and using them as an excuse for not continuing at that moment?

Learning to differentiate the sound of your ego from the sound of your own thoughts takes practice and radical honesty. The only help I can offer is that whenever the “thought” is trying to take you away from discomfort, it is the ego, no matter how rational or attractive the “thought” may be. There’s a big difference between taking a “detour” off the path out of the pure excitement and joy of exploration, and doing it in order to escape discomfort.

Your friends might help by playing a part in the movie created for you by your Infinite I to bring these judgments and the voice of your ego to your attention, if you’re willing to hear it. But you are going to have to be completely awake and aware and vigilant, and listen to your thoughts and the words you say very carefully, to detect these judgments when they come creeping in, to have the courage and honesty not to try to justify or deny or minimize them, and to process them instead. You’ve heard of a “bullshit detector?” Now you’re going to need a “judgment detector” to use on yourself; because no matter what route you take over the Rockies, if you are serious about becoming a butterfly, you cannot hang on to your judgmental beliefs and opinions. That simply will not get you where you say you want to go.

FOOTNOTES

1. Wikipedia – Mores – Back to reading

2. Dictionary.com – morality – Back to reading

3. American Heritage Dictionary – judgment – Back to reading

4. Merriam-Webster Dictionary – judgment – Back to reading

5. The Free Dictionary – duality – Back to reading

6. American Heritage Dictionary - monism – Back to reading

7. NonDualityInfo.com – Back to reading

8. Walker, A., in a book review of One: Essential Writings on Nonduality – Back to reading

9. Id. – Back to reading

10. MacLean, Kenneth. The Vibrational Universe – Back to reading

11. The Holy Bible, King James Version, Genesis, 2.9 – Back to reading

12. Ibid., 2.25 – Back to reading

13. Ibid., 3.7 – Back to reading

14. Ibid., Genesis, 3.23 – Back to reading

15. The Holy Bible, King James Version. Revelation, 2.7 – Back to reading

16. Gotquestions.org – Armageddon – Back to reading

17. Jalal al-Din Rumi. From the poem Out Beyond Ideas in The Essential Rumi – Back to reading

18. McTaggert, Lynne. The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe - p. xxi – Back to reading

CHAPTER 17

BELIEFS & OPINIONS

Back to the Table of Contents

Dr. Bruce Lipton began his scientific career as a cell biologist. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville before joining the Department of Anatomy at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine in 1973, where his research on muscular dystrophy focused on the molecular mechanisms controlling cell behavior. In 1982, Dr. Lipton began examining the principles of quantum physics and how they might be integrated into his understanding of the cell’s information processing systems. In the process he discovered that the brain of a cell is not in the nucleus, which is what I was taught in school, but in the membrane – the outer surface, or “skin” of the cell.

“His research at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, between 1987 and 1992, revealed that the environment, operating though the membrane, controlled the behavior and physiology of the cell. His discoveries, which ran counter to the established scientific view that life is controlled by the genes, gave rise to one of today’s most important fields of study, the science of epigenetics. Many subsequent papers by other researchers have since validated his concepts and ideas.”₁

Epigenetics is to biology what quantum physics was to physics; it has turned our age-old understanding of biology upside down; or, as I’ve put it many times already, the opposite of what we have always believed is true. From epigenetics, we now know our perception of the environment controls our DNA, not the other way around.

Bruce is a brilliant man and a good friend. Unfortunately, he still believes what’s “out there” – the human body in particular – is real; but despite that, through his best-selling book, The Biology of Belief, and his live seminars called The Biology of Perception, he offers some very important insights into the effects of beliefs on our lives.

“How we see life determines our behavior, and since perceptions can be wrong, it is more accurate to say that beliefs control biology – what you believe creates your life.”₂

The first example he offers is what is called the “placebo effect.”₃

It is normally used as a medical term, meaning a patient is given something neutral – like a sugar pill – and yet it makes them feel better. There is no chemical reason in the placebo for it to have any effect at all on the body, but it does somehow. That “somehow” is because the patient believes it will, and nothing else. It is the patient’s belief that changes their biology and their behavior.

“Statistics reveal that one-third of all medical healings are the result of the placebo effect.”₄

But this “placebo effect” does not have to be limited to medicine or pills. In fact, it is in operation a lot of the time as we, the Players, believe something – anything – is good for us that is actually neutral, and yet it makes us feel better.

This, of course, is true for all homeopathic remedies as well. Homeopathy is still based on a belief that taking something from “out there” – “natural” though it might be – will have an effect “in here.”

The other side of the coin, and not nearly as well known, is the “nocebo effect₅.” This is when a patient – or a Player – believes something, anything, that is actually neutral is harmful to them; and it makes them feel bad or worse, when in fact there’s nothing in the nocebo that can hurt them at all.

“If a doctor tells you that you have a disease, or the doctor tells you that you’re going to die, and you believe the doctor because he’s a ‘professional,’ the belief will give you a disease or will cause you to die.”₆

The most famous “nocebo” currently is HIV. Dr. Peter Duesberg, member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley – a renowned virologist who received acclaim early in his career for research on oncogenes and cancer – says there’s nothing about HIV that can do damage to a human body, that HIV is a “harmless passenger virus₇;” and according to Dr. Kary Mullis, Nobel Laureate in chemistry, and over two-thousand other medical and scientific researchers, health care professionals, and journalists₈, there is not one scientific paper proving HIV causes AIDS.₉ In fact, HIV fails every accepted scientific test to be called the “cause” of AIDS.₁₀ But if someone believes HIV will make them fatally ill, it will; and over half will die from taking the drugs prescribed to treat them.₁₁

In both cases – the placebo and the nocebo – it is the Player’s belief and not the actual experience that controls their perceptions and determines their behavior.

“If you believe that something will be good for you, it will be good; and if you believe that something is harmful, it will be bad.”₁₂

Dr. Lipton stresses the fact that a lot of our beliefs are “learned” from other people, and those learned beliefs can actually override our natural perceptions and instincts. For example, all babies know how to swim when they are born. But as they grow up and watch the reaction on their parents’ faces whenever they get near water, the baby learns to be afraid of water; and then it needs to be taught how not to fear water and to swim again at the proper age – when their parents are no longer afraid.₁₃

Bruce likens our perception to a camera, taking snapshots of the “physical world” our brain has projected “out there.” But, he says, our beliefs act like filters on that camera, filtering out certain frequencies and changing the picture that comes in; and he offers a very good example of this during his workshops when he puts one slide on the screen that makes no real sense…

… and has the audience put on a pair of glasses he provides with green lenses and look at the picture. Here’s what they see…

Then he has them trade the green lenses for glasses with red lenses and look at the same picture, and here’s what they see…

(You can watch a very short (poor quality) video of this on YouTube here.)

In exactly the same way, Dr. Lipton concludes, our belief filters determine how we perceive our world and therefore how we react and respond to our experiences.

“Life has everything in it, but you will only see what you have belief filters to see.”₁₄

* * *

Take a quick look at this playing card….

It’s a red six of spades, right? Or did you see it as something else?

There’s a classic psychology experiment₁₅ where this red six of spades is shown to a group of people along with other normal playing cards who are writing down the cards they see. Many people cannot see a red six of spades the first few passes through the cards; some can never see it as a red six of spades, even when holding it in their hands.

“The conclusion is that our beliefs can filter and affect what data comes in through our senses. We can end up seeing and hearing only what we believe. The stronger the belief system, the more powerful will be its ability to filter out data that contradicts those beliefs. You were taught and you believe that seeing is believing. It should be the other way around. You have come to understand that metaphorically speaking, the eye is a camera that passively collects light and brings it in to record photographs of what is actually out there, with no alteration of the sense data going on. What I am proposing is that in actuality the reverse of that simple phrase is true: believing is seeing. What I am proposing is that the eye is a camera that filters out most of the electromagnetic spectrum to only record visible light, and that the camera is controlled by the photographer who chooses consciously or unconsciously what to photograph.”₁₆

In this case, we start with a belief that a red six of spades doesn’t exist, so it’s difficult to see it for what it actually is; and for some with very strong and controlling belief systems, it’s virtually impossible.

* * *

I deliberated long and hard about whether to include this next example, because it is so controversial; but it is also the most perfect example I can think of to illustrate how our beliefs affect what we perceive “out there” and prevent us from seeing “what is,” and how those beliefs can contribute to so much pain and suffering in our lives.

Even if you are not a Christian, you probably know Jesus was crucified and died on a cross, to rise again from the dead three days later. Over the last 2000 years, many people have believed this and based their lives on it.

Here is the scripture from the Holy Bible on which this belief is based. (Even if you know this story already, please read it again now.)...

Luke 23:50 “And, behold, there was a man named Joseph….

52 This man went unto Pilate, and begged [for] the body of Jesus.

53 And he took it down, and wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein never man before was laid….

55 And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid.

56 And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.

24:1 Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.

2 And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre.

3 And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.

4 And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments:

5 And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye him that liveth among the dead?

6 He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,

7 saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

8 And they remembered his words,

9 and returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest.

10 It was Mary Mag'dalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.

11 And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.

12 Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.

13 And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.

14 And they talked together of all these things which had happened.

15 And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.

16 But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.

17 And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?

18 And the one of them, whose name was Cle'opas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?

19 And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:

20 and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.

21 But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, today is the third day since these things were done.

22 Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre;

23 and when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.

24 And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not….

28 And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further.

29 But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them.

30 And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.

31 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.

32 And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?

33 And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them,

34 Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.

35 And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.

36 And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

37 But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit.

38 And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?

39 Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

40 And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet.

41 And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat?

42 And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb.

43 And he took it, and did eat before them.”₁₇

But what if this were actually the account of a man who was taken down from his cross after just three hours, still alive, moved to a secret hiding place where he was treated for the wounds on his hands and feet and head and side, survived, left three days later under his own steam, and met his disciples on the road as he was walking out of Jerusalem.

In other words, I want to ask you to read the exact same Bible passages again, without the prior belief Jesus died on the cross….