Mood and Consciousness

mood and consciousness:

what is it that expresses mood in a facial expression? do you find that even non-facial images or even letters of the alphabet, mere squiggles, for example, carry a kind of mood? why is what we see not just neutral colours, devoid of mood or any kind of emotion?

so let us assume we can indeed see moods. is it a form of consciousness? does my consciousness extend beyond my head into my field of vision? or is what is in my head a special, heightened version of consciousness while i am surrounded by a kind of low level consciousness around my head? in any case, what is the difference between thought, mood, consciousness and emotion? is it that there are in fact in the middle elements in between these categories, where one becomes another?

and what can i say about myself, my consciousness, my person? apparently, i was always viable for Earth, as i am now clearly living on Earth. i can imagine a whole series of diagnostics performed by the system on my person pre-Earth. "test subject X5405/A11...all senses required, check...virtual motion engine, check...comms link to system, check...voice test, check...all parameters in range...subject is viable for Earth...scheduling on..."

let us assume for the most part that the system works, and life, in regard to meeting people, is what it seems. real people meet real people. a communication link is established across space. but if some people are not real, are actually simulants, although derivatives of real people but not quite real themselves, how does that work? are there, if you like, personal essences or energies that travel across space to jack the system, so to speak, into misfiring into producing plausible, functioning fictional people that we interact with on a daily basis?

when supernatural experiences happen, something happens in the mind that, if you like, breaks the system, even if only briefly. terms like altered states of consciousness, special emotional states, these have been talked about before, and it makes sense, for the out of normal experience to happen, first your mental state has to be out of normal.

CLEARCHARGE

The Odd Things

the odd things:

are you that normal about life on Earth? has anything odd ever happened to you?

odd things have happened to me. i've teleported. i've seen a railway timetable change instantly in front of me. i've seen a railway map of a completely different Britain in a train. i've reread a book, sure a passage i remember had disappeared. and more besides.

of course, even as a child, before i had teleported, i had problems accepting the 3D mechanical motion theoretical model. i can see quite far, my field of vision extends far in front of me. it's not a flat image in my head, my eyesight. how could someone really be where i see them, without my eyesight, if you like, the actual material structure of the images of my eyesight in front of me, knocking them over when i move? so people are never really there where you see them. it's just a hologram representing a person. and nothing really "moves".

what i learned from these odd experiences was that the world is not as stable as you think, things can change instantly which suggests the discrete nature of change and time, that the system does not work perfectly, and records or memories of the past may mutate so as to become inaccurate or even false.

of course the world is a simulation in the sense that it's simulating a universe where the 3D mechanical motion theoretical model holds. physical motion is not real.

if the world has an unreal quality, and an inherent instability, it leads one to ask, can the simulation be hacked? can we control what happens? now when most of these odd things happened to me, i was in a florid schizophrenic state. for when your mind is unstable, your world is unstable. we have to sense what is possible first, then concentrate on that. it's all very well to say we manifest what we think about, of course thought precedes much of what happens, but we need to know what is probable first.

CLEARCHARGE

Social Dynamics: The Gang of Four

social dynamics the gang of four:

given that it is far from rare, and that the median social group is often thus, let us then examine the dynamic that exists between four people, although even transient it may be, and let not how it came to be, this gang of four, trouble us, rather so how it functions be the operative question. why four? is two or three not enough?

a gang, a party, an expeditionary force, to expedite matters in life or business, renders the individual qualms about being on your own, to rest, the total of a gang of four is more than the sum of each member parts, which is why! role playing, even board games, these things don't function for the player in isolation, not only are other people required to operate such, to state all gain from such! we need someone physically capable, we need someone cerebral, we need a wizard mayhap, we need someone adept, maybe we need more in this crew!

skills that contribute to the welfare of the party, for the mission in life, to the bitter end if need be, make up the set of talents core to the group. primary to the cohesive nature of the gang is a facility for easy interaction, an agreement on secular matters at least, there are a range of issues to debate over time.

why not less? why not be alone? and so searching for something, best described as moving toward a common goal is what molds the group and holds it fast.

a common identity becomes them. what trace the gang of four leaves remains within them.

CLEARCHARGE

Home to Easterwick

home to Easterwick:

in the train, back to home, what crosses her mind? that home is best? that public transport is an effort in itself? that that inspires fantasy about travel is rather lost in the moment, the hurly burly of getting to the station, waiting on platform, thinking of something to do in the train, else stare out the window, why did she come here in the first place?

what called her there was out of her control mostly, this is what happens to type. that there is much attention is off putting, one of life's hurdles, to be dealt with seriously at the time.

that the prospectus was enticing, according to appearance. it was much mentioned, in the same breath as the other place, is the full answer. was it a social paradise? social types parading through the grounds and in the streets, living it up, R. and R. in town.

i've imagined it well, really well, actually! somewhere east of Tonbridge, in the Kent Downs, far downhill from Orpington, a fantastic house, overlooking the Downs, the serviceable rooms at the front, black and white checkerboard tiles, a magnificent staircase leading up to one continuous bedroom, a bed forty foot wide, pillars, and seemingly infinite at the rear! one day, perhaps, on a wild drive in the country, she will come upon it, down a winding tree littered rough road, exactly as i've imagined it!

CLEARCHARGE

Before It All Happens

before it all happens:

"when i was a boy, i never drank coffee, i never drank tea, now look at me, cup after cup, you know. what i thought was true forever when i was a little kid stopped when i was like fifteen."

"you became a total cynic! me, i stopped believing all that when i was thirteen, really, just a teenager to begin with. i wasn't a princess anymore, i didn't live in a castle, you know, i felt i had to grow up."

"that's what i'm saying. i'm only forty something but it's like i've had several lifetimes already, really like what it was at kid level, when i was young, that life and all its expectations totally died. it completely cut off at eighteen, a whole new life starting. i still recognize the child in me, i'm not saying it's gone completely."

"right. but it's different for me, i had hopeless really what could only be called fantasies about life. i didn't fully believe them even as a little girl. that's my problem."

"why's it like that? are you saying i'm more realistic? i'm not more realistic, i don't think. what i'm saying is, it seemed like the whole world changed, you know, the 1970s were different, the atmosphere changed to what it is now."

"yeah, but did it really change or have you changed? that's the question. or both which is probably the true answer."

"right, yeah, okay, but i don't think i've changed. maybe i was delusional as a kid and that's the change. like you say you've changed but i don't think you've really changed not all the time i've known you. you're still the same."

"but you didn't know me when i was seven or eight years old!"

"true, but how different could you be?"

"different. i drink coffee now. there are so many choices, coffee houses, coffee shops, cafés. when is tea going to be like that? it's like there are more coffee places than bars. when will there be, you know, tea houses, tea shops, tea bars maybe?"

"you know, after i've had so much coffee, it all tastes the same to me. i'm disturbed by a lot of things happening that i feel i'm unprepared for, that i couldn't see coming. it's like life is peaceful for a while and then boom!, it all happens. all at once. good things, bad things."

"it's crazy. you have no way of knowing when it will happen or how you will react."

CLEARCHARGE

The Way of Gritty

the way of gritty:

it's been a long day. it's been long years. then about now it seems like the past has caught up with you. first it was the world, then it was the earth, then it was country, now it's whatever. transport gets easier.

how are you supposed to deal with it? so you've lived this long so far so OK? and it would be fine if only you could remember right? but how to get to the next step? like i'm driving, hand on the steer, get into the picture right? one move right, where does that go? i respond to that, what does that do?

picture the rails, the grit, think about tower, think about the little doll of a girl, in a red dress, hiding in her attic, never went to school, always dreaming of travel, what you have! think of the master at school, how do you pay him back?

all right, prepare for the next step, no two ways about it, you have to, but the fourth step, it's still coming, even if it barely seems real now.

in the station, the sign the way, but the geography, right or left and so on. lunch is always a question on this day of travel. you need to promote your choice, not enter into comparison, like the choice of transport it is always better to go for the sure thing!

CLEARCHARGE

The Thing I Wanted Said

the thing i wanted said:

what can one remember of the talk it had? memory is much like a prancing, squirming beast, difficult to tame and not readily servile. only offering so much, was it hard for you, or easy? i know well part of what you meant, but now only a strip of information remains.

how much do you mean of it? was that what you wanted me to know?

well, said and meant, only one the thing i wanted said. after all, how much could i really say at the time? you'll work it out.

for now, i am backed into a corner by decisions i made long ago as a young man, and so indeed so much for destiny. fate distracted me. what sense i can make of it?

CLEARCHARGE

Not What Happens at Death but What Happens at Birth?

not what happens at death but what happens at birth:

what happens when we die? it's a common question. but a better question may be what happens when we are born? at least here we may have some idea, some memory, and also it may offer some answer as to what happens when we die.

now i am here and you are there, forever fixed in space. there is no changing that. the material or substance or matter that we are exists in all time, immovable. but what we think and what we see and hear changes constantly. it constructs our "lives" on earth, our sensory experience. it is important, i feel, to note that these things are volatile. they can change in an instant. it is a fallacy to assume everything developed gradually over a long time because of the very nature of our senses.

now to consider what happens at death, and there is much about this out there, there are three general possibilities that we all know of, and have been much discussed. you could come to some kind of "end", that is, black out forever, though this is conceptually difficult being that what you are is a conscious being with a large sensory field. or you could reincarnate and live again on earth in a different life. or you could "move on" to another life not on earth that is different from what came before. but the fourth possibility, and i have not seen this discussed elsewhere, is that you revert to what you were before life on earth, before being born in this world. it's a kind of mean reversion, so to speak. so what happened when you were born on earth?

just because we may not clearly remember anything before life on earth does not mean we were somehow created in an instant at our earth birth and we did not exist beforehand. lack of memory does not equate to non-existence beforehand! this is a fallacy.

now my first memories of earth are dream memories. life on earth began as a dream that i woke up on earth in. first memories of being with my mother, then with my father and then fully awake with my father and sister on a plane about to fly to Honolulu from Taipei in August, 1975. my passport was stamped in Hawaii on August 29. i was three years old. now there were about a dozen dreams in sequence. i must have been asleep for about four days. however, the dream sequence matches my life history about a year up to when i awoke in the dream. a year squeezed into four days!

now there are various themes and conclusions here. one, life on earth is "living in the dream", because that is how you enter earth and what it still is. two, in a dream you can't remember facts about your waking life. therefore, because earth is the dream world and you're "still in the dream", you can't remember what life was before earth.

but what i am, has that radically changed because i was born on earth? i don't think so. i understood language at the time i was "born" on earth. there was stuff i didn't need to learn and already knew. so i learned all this before i was born on earth? most probably.

this raises the interesting question of how we are selected for our lives on earth. i don't think it's random. all those who spoke Russian before their lives on earth born in Russia? all English speakers fated to live in an English speaking country? all probably yes.

now how do i remember this birth dream sequence so clearly? now it is an observation that we tend to remember things that are shockingly new. and the earth birth dream sequence must have been so.

think of the dream world as the passageway between worlds. we go many places in our dreams. so what is death but yet another vivid dream that will call the end to our life on earth?

CLEARCHARGE

True Crazy and Acting Normal

true crazy and acting normal:

as someone who was forcibly committed or sectioned to mental hospital not just once, but twice, in my twenties, the inescapable conclusion is this: acting not normal is actually really illegal! it is the unspoken law of society on Earth - you will act normal, or you will be imprisoned!

as i see it, you can be as crazy as you wanna be, but for your own sake, act normal around other people! that means no talking to yourself, even if that is almost impossible when you hear voices. the stereotype of the schizophrenic wandering around whispering to himself, oblivious of everyone else around him, is a true one. what needs to be realized is the intense nature of what is going on in this situation. the voices and the people they represent seem more real than the surrounding people you can see and touch. an ironic possibility is that of the somewhat simulated reality, where the people around you, for the most part, are truly not real people, only simulated people and the people you talk to with voices are, yes, completely real, yet you cannot see them! also, another big thing for acting normal is appearance and hygiene, you simply have to maintain this or people will pick up on it. i rather wish i had been taught how to act normal at school, it would have been far more useful than such esoteric studies as some history and religion. it's stuff a grownup really needs to know! many Christians believe the world is about 7,000 years old, indeed the old Russian calendar before Peter the Great adopted the Julian Calendar, was based on this assumption. my own bias is to think the world is much younger, shockingly so, only over 400 years old, but i digress.

i often suspect that there are far more schizophrenic people than accounted for by official statistics. they say 1% but what if everyone is to some degree? and what if most people just can successfully hide it? by acting normal, of course! Earth is somewhat at least, i believe, hallucinatory in basis. now i'm older, i find it hard to believe that everyone i see in the streets is real, and i've seen odd things, people disappearing, and appearing, out of nowhere. they say many people hear voices but are never diagnosed mentally ill. and it doesn't seem possible that "science", or whatever it is, works perfectly all the time. i think everyone has had some experience where they've wondered to themselves, what just happened? maybe they saw something odd that doesn't make sense. when i was very schizophrenic, i had too many strange experiences to ever fully believe again in the received "normal" world and its teachings of what's what.

and meanwhile, people who have been completely normal up till now, who have never questioned existence on Earth, perhaps they believe things that are false, have been easily led by modern science and its teachings, and are actually truly crazy about reality and metaphysics. one thing i have gone on and on about is that physical motion is not real! you do not really move! nothing really moves! it just seems like it! read my previous posts.

but how much can someone function if they are fundamentally crazy about metaphysics and reality? will they not one day hit the wall, so to speak, because they are insane about how reality and the world really work? the reason i am interested in metaphysics is because of my schizophrenia. if it hadn't happened when i was 20 years old, i might still be a dozy, normal person, just accepting the world as it seems. but when you are shaken up mentally, it leads you to question everything.

CLEARCHARGE

Being Able to Accept the Small Loss

being able to accept the small loss:

in gambling, you are always going to suffer losses sometimes. and actually, if you gamble long enough, you will have a huge losing streak at some point. this is inevitable.

i don't think i fully understood this before i began. they don't advertise this. they don't say, according to mathematical probability, a run of up to ten losses in a row is not even that uncommon after playing long enough. i suppose i was born optimistic, thinking i could win, and i can see now how this could be dangerous, always assuming everything's going to work out.

how you react to a losing streak determines quite a bit, actually. twice, i couldn't stop. i just bet larger and larger chasing my losses. this is not what you should do! you should accept the small loss, stop and walk away.

a win may not make much of a difference but a huge loss, all the money you have and even more if you've borrowed, could ruin your life.

CLEARCHARGE

The Head Stone in the Land of Illusion

the head stone in the land of illusion:

and the head stone knew for certain then that physical motion was not real. movement was virtual, therefore material objects, the planet, the stars, the universe, all were not quite what they seemed. it thought to itself, i'm a lump of thinking matter that can see pretty lights and hear music and voices, that's all, and keep that in mind, for i'm in the land of illusion now.

how did it get here? dreams had become waking life. the mother in its dreams at the beginning had become its mother in the land of illusion. it realized that this was a world when the boundaries between dream and waking life were blurred. sometimes it thought, i don't feel real, none of this is real. and sometimes people in dreams seemed more real than people in waking life. the land of dreams lay between the old world of its past life and the land of illusion that was Earth.

and when will i leave this land of illusion, the head stone wondered. it concluded that like in the beginning of this life, it would start with an intense dream of somewhere else, for the land of dreams lies between all worlds.

CLEARCHARGE

Errors in the Matrix

errors in the matrix:

i borrow the term "matrix" from the films but what i mean is that life here on Earth cannot be quite what it seems, that the material world is somewhat illusory. some of these errors in the matrix are obvious, like when you teleport, as happened to me in Durham, England, in 1993 and 1994, or when you suddenly skip a short distance ahead when you're walking, a mini-teleport, if you will. that happened to me, my father and sister in the underground lobby of the Louvre, in Paris, in 1998. these are clear visual mistakes, things that go against the rules of movement in the matrix. the audio mistakes are more subtle, like when you can bend the lyrics of a song to what you are thinking, when your mind takes over what you're hearing.

but there are other things less obvious. if you're careful, and observant, and your memory is good enough, you will notice other errors. first of all, in my experience, text, what you see on a printed page, is not reliably permanent, is actually unstable. there are instances where i'm sure the print has changed. for example, the first time i read a certain novel, there was a certain passage i remember which i couldn't find again on rereading it. it had disappeared. i am talking about the same book, not reading a copy of a later edition. i've found discarded railway and Underground tickets in London dated in the future. railway timetable boards have changed instantly in front of me. recently, looking through old credit card statements yesterday, something else has come to my attention. now in my memory i bought Sony earphones at Bluewater, in Greenhithe, in 2009, but i also remember after that i found the unopened earphones package with the receipt one day and the receipt was printed showing the transaction as being at the Sony store in Orpington, so after that i assumed my memory was wrong and that i had actually bought it there, not at Bluewater. but now the credit card statement confirms that it was bought at Bluewater in May, 2009. now i have not bought so many Sony earphones that i have confused them with another. i can only conclude that the matrix, the Earth system, had the actual source record for the receipt corrupted or mutated to show false details.

now things like this make you think you are losing your mind perhaps, or that your memory is faulty. but if your memory is correct that means the text has changed, and that you can never rely on text to stay the same. it is fortunate that i've seen text change instantly in front of me or i would keep questioning my memory, assuming that the text couldn't change.

and another thing i've noticed and i've read about elsewhere on the web on glitches in the matrix, but am not sure about, is seeing people walk past me twice. now i wasn't paying attention to where they were all the time exactly, but am i seeing repeats?

as someone with the diagnosis of schizophrenia, i am expected to hallucinate and i do know i do hallucinate. you see where this leads, hypothetically? if i hallucinate, am i hallucinating everything? everything and everyone on Earth? am i totally alone in my own world of hallucinations? once the error in the matrix becomes obvious, becomes apparent, you instinctively move mentally to dismiss the entire world as a falsity. this is extreme, but a natural reaction.

CLEARCHARGE

Talk As Play Match Like and the Pitfall of Different Interest

talk as play match like and the pitfall of different interest:

to the objective observer, a successful conversation reveals that the talkers are alike in some ways, one of them reveals something about himself or herself and the other, in essence, responds that they are the same that way. what is success? obviously, where both are happy about the talk. and you can sense the truth of this theory about success from playing match like with like in personality, values and interests by thinking about what the opposite is, a disaster in conversation, namely an argument where it is apparent that both are not the same, that they have sharp differences.

where even two people have the same interest, they may have different levels of interest. one may be only slightly interested. given that you like to speak about what you're interested in, and most people are interested in themselves, an obvious example of what could go wrong is that you say too much about yourself, more than interests the other person. it would require some fascination with the other person to be a captive audience.

talk reveals what seems very real in your own world. you should be aware that these things may not figure so much in another person's world, they may not be important to them, they may not even think about them. as an example, if one remembers such and such happened when together with the other person, but the other person doesn't remember at all, it is awkward to mention it and be met with puzzled indifference.

and where talk starts going wrong, before full blown argument, when the other person is in a bad mood and suspects the worst of you, it is probably wise to say as little as possible. it's like everything you say will be used against you, that is, it will only trigger a chain of bad thoughts in the other person's mind about you. everything you say will be given a negative interpretation. or that they think you're lying.

but rather coldly viewed, to say anything to another person is always a risk, it's inherent in life. we start off knowing very little about the other person. it's actually very easy for it to go wrong in the beginning, until you have some idea of the other person, you really don't know what is safe to say, what you have in common.

subjectively, good talk seems almost to have a kind of glamour injected. mutual personal values are confirmed, essentially, we both think such and such are good things, we both want to have such and such. one validates the other.

CLEARCHARGE

The Destiny of the Head Stone

the destiny of the head stone:

one of the first questions the head stone ever had was where am i? for there was something to see, even in the beginning, which makes sense because otherwise it surely would have been blind. and the magical light in the cone-shaped field in front of it was deceptive for it implied movement. later, it concluded finally that where it was, really, bore no relation to what it saw. images may seem to move, but the head stone was truly forever immovable, like a piece of jade embedded in the rock of space.

another question in the beginning was, of course, were there others like it? as time became apparent would it meet them, be able to see some representation of another person? or at least know something of what lay far beyond it in space? how to communicate with someone else through the senses? the first moments of time were deceptively quiet and solitary.

be that as it may, it was destined to be born into the later world, really a vigorous exercise of the senses, even if such life is mostly a visual experience, a son et lumière for the mind. and like all shows, its life in this world had to come to an end. time is elastic, the return to what life was before was inevitable.

and it would think back on its period in the world, its life there, what it was to think for a time that it was someone living in a universe with billions of people on a planet called Earth.

CLEARCHARGE

From a Dream to Earth

from a dream to earth:

it was something like this, a series of dreams that were snapshots of life as a three year old. it covered a period of about a year in my life history, although i estimate the time i was asleep was only for a few days. i question why i remember the sequence so well. it must be because they were particularly vivid dreams almost like waking life. certainly the last dream became such. i awoke in the dream. i had come to Earth.

i cannot remember the day before i fell asleep and was truly born on Earth. i guess life was very simpler. i am not solipsistic by nature, even though for short periods i did consider i could be alone, even that the world was created the day i was born and that was why i could remember nothing beforehand. of course i dismissed that. from experience, i know that in a dream, memory is destroyed or unavailable and that is probably why i remember next to nothing about my previous life. i am still held in the "dream" of Earth.

to the paranoid suffering on Earth, it is not hard to imagine that an external demon, much like that of Descartes' concept, has lured us to Earth and imprisoned us against our will. because we are powerless in the process, it seems there are greater forces at work, but is it really personal? i confess, given a choice, i would not have come here. but also, i have dreamed far worse nightmares, Earth is not the worst prison. it is the lack of power that is frightening. i didn't ask to be born here.

what is the way out? can we return from whence we came? it seems logical that the exit is the entrance, we can only leave through a dream as well. i guess that before i die on Earth, dreams will become more vivid, more lucid perhaps, and that one day i will dream of elsewhere and wake up there. i will have died just as i was born.

CLEARCHARGE

Life Like in a Matrix

life like in a matrix:

"having seen The Matrix movie, it's inevitable that you ask yourself, what if i'm in a matrix? i mean it's deceptive, we know the movie is a fiction and over the top so it's easy to dismiss, but what if the concept of simulated reality were real, just a more normal, mundane version? if i were in a matrix, how does the real thing differ from the movie one?"

"but what do you mean by in a matrix exactly?"

"well, first of all, the external world is not real. i mean, some might say that means philosophical idealism is true, but i'm not so sure that means everything is mental, that is, somehow related to thought and the five senses, what if there were still non-mental things which you couldn't exactly call physical or material as in like what you see in what is perceived as the physical external world, actually, as an aside, i'm not so sure physical is the right word as that means "human body" to me and i'm guessing that was the original meaning, but like, what if there were statues of humans that really existed in space, unchanging, but you couldn't exactly call them mental things, you know? what if there were solid forms out there fixed in space from which things we see are derived? the second thing about being in a matrix is that at least some people are simulated. i guess that's what i mean about a matrix, like that in the film, The Matrix."

"but who owns the matrix? is there a central supercomputer and all the data is delivered via a connection to everyone? are there several of them? local sub-servers? what? i can see how connection was always there. everyone is connected. people who aren't connected are really people in separate realities that aren't even here."

"i think reality and creation are a little messy. it's like some things always existed, right from the start of time, like parts of the supercomputer, parts of nature, human even. i think maybe things we take for granted were probably always there, like up and down and things fall downwards and we walk on top of the ground. i mean it's completely possible to imagine a reality where the opposite holds, where everything is upside down."

"so things that seem supermodern to us may have been there since time zero? i suppose if it's possible now, then the basic parts were always there is an argument. and i guess if everyone is connected, it's probable that everyone in a matrix is in the same one."

"yes i think it's unwise to assume, once you've accepted the matrix premise, that you're completely alone in your own matrix and everyone you see is simulated."

"yes going from one extreme, assuming the external world and everyone you see is real, to the complete opposite, it's all virtual. i think that says something about the way we think, in absolute extremes."

"whereas life is a grey area in between. you say who owns the matrix, that suggests there's some mastermind behind it with all the power but what if no one has any great power at all, we're all averagely unpowerful people stuck in the matrix because reality always was and is, so to speak, "matrix-ready"?"

"well that's one meaning of own, but i meant more like, where is the supercomputer, i mean in whose personal space?"

"well, if we are all fixed in space, some people always near, some far, you know, where does one person's space become another's? some people may be all together in a cluster, some may be far spaced out. about who owns it, i guess it's probably in parts piecemeal across reality's space. it's just too simple to think that, yes, all of it is in one person's personal space."

"so maybe the work's farmed out. we have to assume connection is great, i guess. maybe the orange is somewhere, and wheat in someone's else's zone, for example. but what if someone had a total breakdown, like a key processor is in someone's personal space, her zone, if you like, and she was really in a bad way?"

"well there is the possibility everything stops working tomorrow. like i've often wondered, what if the sun doesn't come up in the morning? things like that, you know."

"so you need a backup, right? maybe that's there, hopefully. i think the key is that the situation is very fluid. the way time works, i think, is that things could change in an instant, time isn't continuous, it's discrete perhaps, is a theory. but i think the internet makes everything change even faster. it's instant. one of the reasons i'm not a solipsist is that there is all this media, you think there's no way my subconscious could come up with all this stuff, therefore i couldn't possibly be alone. maybe there are a lot of real people working in the media? in Hollywood? and so Los Angeles?"

"i read articles about science and i wonder how much of it could hold up, given that many scientists assume the external world is real?"

"well if it works, it works. but what came first? it's like the chicken and the egg, were they discovering how things work or magically making things work according to their theory? the scientist could be a god, no?"

"well then everyone's a god of something. if say, the orange were originally here, does that make me the god of the orange? maybe."

"well then if it's all personal, i guess it gets a little creepy. how much do you accept from another person? if you knew something was originally theirs? is it better to give or to receive? would we even get along if we met?"

"well everyone's done it, i guess. so it's a little late to start worrying about it now. but to give and to receive, well someone has to receive and someone has to give. i mean, we're all connected, in one reality, so give is good, receive is good. it means there's a connection. otherwise we'd be completely alone."

"if you put it that way. what about language? i mean it's just like the fruit example in a way. if you go by what the media says, English is the most common language. you think maybe space could be divided up into language zones? but what if there were, say, Russian or French speakers to the right on a map of reality but also to the far left, could they really be apart, i mean, is a distribution with isolated zones with the same language even possible, because you'd think all the speakers of a language would be in one zone, right?"

"i would say English has many contributors to make it that common. originally, a language was just the sounds in the air, so to speak, and then we attached meanings, that's my theory, or maybe even a sound was already attached to the presence of something in a metaphysical sense."

"for me, the interesting thing about The Matrix was the paranoia about the evil demonic supercomputer behind it all. what if by creating the simulation and all these simulated people we did something dangerous? i mean hopefully it's harmless and only makes us a little crazy, but what if it's really bad?"

"try to turn it off? the thing is, it's really out of our control, or it seems it is. it's like trying to stop dreaming, having nightmares. we have to roll with the punches."

"and hope for the best?"

"always."

CLEARCHARGE

Hypotheses on Reality and Playing with Belief Cards

hypotheses on reality and playing with belief cards:

"it never comes to that. no one really talks about it, do they, what they really believe about reality? it is unspoken but everyone knows what they have to assume to go about their normal lives on earth and they get it from what they see and hear around them."

"well, nobody really talks about it, but they may think it, that reality, the world of earth, is not quite what it seems, what you say everyone has to assume: an external world, physical motion, materialism or physicalism, whatever you call it. i think the reason really is a paranoid one, that they suspect they'll be accused of being at least slightly crazy and at worst get hauled off to a mental hospital and locked up forever. but then, also, i guess, these things can't be demonstrably proved to anyone else."

"or disproved. like if i say there is no external world, and this is the major plank of belief or assumption that everyone has to go by, really, well then someone will say, "what are we, a brain in a vat?" well, the problem with that is it assumes that there is still an external world outside our brain or our mind, a room with a vat and cables hooking us up to a Matrix-like simulation. the belief lingers on, whereas it should be thrown out completely. there is no external room where our brains are in, no wires, nothing. if anything, it's completely cleanly, invisibly done or connected."

"but we are visually impressionable people. it's not surprising, when everything we see leads us to assume there is an external world out there. we believe more what we see than what we hear, i guess."

"the truth of the matter is that if everyone teleported then the belief in an external world would collapse overnight. i can claim i have, but unless you do it yourself, you're going to doubt it."

"yes. it's completely obvious that the external world is not real when you've done it, teleport that is."

"yes. it's like an epiphany. because that just can't happen if the external world is real and the transition between locations is seamless, i mean, you feel nothing. i've read of other weird things happening to people, like seeing events repeated, a person passing by twice, or finding their car on a different level in the car park or parking lot, and seeing things that weren't there before suddenly appearing and so on."

"well, you could assume you are the only one who has teleported but surely if you'd done it, someone else has as well? it's just a fault in the visual geographical system. maybe it's even a fault or bug in the system that's contagious?"

"it happened to me so it has to happen to someone else? i'm propagating errors in the system?"

"but tell me again what the alternative is to an external material world?"

"right, physical motion is not real or mechanical motion or what seems like motion. in real space, everything exists in a fixed location relative to everything else. only time makes things change state."

"but then with pop culture and everything, you think, well, what is life then if not the commonly thought? is it a dream, is it the Matrix, what is it?"

"well that's where i run into problems too. i mean they are not clear-cut binary alternative possibilities, like is the external world real or not? i mean, i remember my life on earth began as a dream, right, but computers, hey, they're completely real, the technology, right? so it's probably at least a bit of both. what i have noticed, for me anyway, is that when i'm in a dream, i'm completely hazy about the true facts of my life, it's like i have an alternative dream existence that progresses that's similar to my waking life. i dream of my old school, my old homes, but the circumstances are different and when i try to remember facts about my waking life, i often think things that are false, only to realize upon waking, that i was incorrect."

"right, the dreams sweep you up and everything moves so fast that you're completely caught up in it."

"yeah, so you have the amnesia effect that blocks out the truth about waking life."

"which explains why you poorly remember what happened before you were born into this world, on earth. but as a schizophrenic who hears auditory hallucinations, what about that? i mean the question is, obviously, whether you hear thoughts that are your own, or it's coming from real other people."

"it's extremely awkward talking to your psychiatrist about voices. because inevitably, they want to know what you hear, right? and a lot of the stuff is personal. it's either your inner thoughts as sound or it's coming from people that are truly nearby, or even far away, i suppose."

"who may or may not be on earth, as well. how schizophrenic would you say you were, on a scale of 1 to 10?"

"well, there are different aspects. you have the voices, which to every psychiatrist indicates you are schizo, right? maybe i was about a 7 in that area once, at one time i had about 7 or 8 different voices going on at the same time. but the eyesight going haywire, the teleportation, the streams of text i could see, train timetables instantly changing in front of me, different maps of the country where the towns are all in wrong places, travel tickets dated in the future, passages of novels changing, all that made me about at least 9 on that scale, if not 10."

"whatever it is, a Matrix, or a dream, or whatever, is everyone in the same one? i mean, a lot of the stuff must be shared, right?"

"i can see how, if everyone were in their own matrix, they would end up with solipsistic fancies."

"right. all the stuff about the Law of Attraction, i mean, it could work, if you were in your own world, conceivably. but if everyone were in the same earth Matrix, it would seem a little harder to manifest things. you can't control other people and events so much."

"though, imagine a modern house existed right at the start of time. i mean, running hot water and electrical machines and lights. it's like in time, they reverse engineered everything to make it work mechanically, you know, installed plumbing, connected pipes to reservoirs, built power stations and so on. but the point is, that was there, this working house, in the beginning."

"like human is original, not created. OK, if we dismiss the external world outright, since you so proved it wasn't real, i mean, that's one philosophical question out of the way, the big question really is, what about the other people in reality? OK, do we assume everyone is on earth or some are left out? on earth are all the other people we see real or are some simulated people? are there other planets with people on them, in this same universe, could this be a Star Wars or Star Trek universe? are there other simulations running?"

"i don't know. it's like playing with different ideas. if only you had a deck of cards with different ideas or beliefs about reality, i mean you could play around with them, mix and match and see where that leads you. some beliefs negate others but i can see how some could all be real in some way."

"well, i can't help feeling that it is important to know the truth. i mean we may not be able to "know" in the strictest philosophical sense but at least we could think about the truth to some emotional depth. like, if i assume my mother is not real, is just a philosophical zombie, a simulated person, is it important to know that?"

"i think it's important to at least know the true date and how much of the history of earth may not be real. i mean, i've come out with the date Year 442 as the true date before, but that's just what i've heard. a lot of schizophrenics say the voices lie to them and whatever, but what if some of it's true?"

"it would explain a lot. how little everyone knows about reality for starters. and it's not like intelligent life doesn't exist. it does. it would just be that so little time has passed from the start of time that everyone is still feeling around for the truth. but voices do lie is the problem, some of the time. you can't believe everything you hear."

"back to what you were saying. i dreamed about my mother first and then my father second and i think i woke up next to my father and sister on a plane from Taipei to Hawaii on 29 August, 1975. US Immigration stamped the date at Honolulu on my passport which i still have. but my official birthday is February 11, 1972, so i was already 3 years old when i was truly born on earth. i guess some might say that's when my soul truly arrived."

"you still dream about your parents don't you?"

"yes. and they're alternative versions of them."

"you know, some would say that you merely forgot everything that happened before."

"well, no, i clearly remember the dream sequence leading up to that. i've never forgot. so i definitely have preferences, is waking life a dream? well, no, but it's, derived from it, is that the right word?"

"of course, the other big question, is what happens when you die on earth?"

"yes. are we fated to reincarnate on earth or do we go back to whatever it was before? because whatever real matter we are, it can't cease to exist right, it could only change to something very different at worst, right?"

"but back to the here and now. i'm obsessed with knowing who, if given some people are not real, is actually real that i interact with on a regular basis. i mean, what figure should i hold in my mind? are we all surrounded by illusions of people in our daily life but we read and see and hear about real people in the media?"

"or there could be pockets of real people together in some places. you never know, you could be surrounded by lots of real people, you just don't know it."

"but what is a best guess estimate? 66% zombies? 1% real people? or what?"

"yeah. there is a danger, when you've woken up about the external world not being the case, that you assume you're surrounded by illusions. i mean, it could be really embarrassing. you might know lots of real people but suddenly assume they're all not real."

"i know. i've thought of that. but sometimes people just don't seem real. you can mentally control what some people say or there is a touch of that or they're just completely predictable."

"i don't know. i've had someone say to me before, apropos of nothing, "i'm quite real." and i was grateful to hear it. i don't think anyone, it's not like anyone would come up and say, "i want you to know, i am a zombie, a simulated person, a non-player character, a complete illusion."

"haha. i don't see that happening, you're right."

CLEARCHARGE

The Mistaken Path

the mistaken path:

"any regrets?"

"yeah, i'm not someone who can claim they have no regrets. the problem with life and choices is that when we set off on a new path, so to speak, we often don't know where it leads. it's like we have a map with parts missing. and the problem is that even if we're told what could happen, we don't really believe it, not without first hand personal experience, for example, gambling. it is a mathematical truth that inevitably a regular gambler will hit a huge losing streak at some time. how does he or she deal with it? the worst kind of gamblers are those who cannot accept losses, who may start off little but the bets get bigger and bigger until they are broke, or worse, heavily in debt with no more credit. and it's all a blur. it starts off with a tiny bet maybe, but hours later, down thousands. it's like once you start on the path, there's less resistance to go further and conversely, it's harder to get back, to stop."

"so don't make the first step onto that path?"

"right. once you start, you keep going. it's like now my map of life is covered with "danger" warning signs for several paths where i fear to tread again."

"well, maybe it's best to make all your mistakes early in life?"

"yeah, so there's time to recover. but the fear is, what if you couldn't recover from some mistakes?"

"it's all a learning experience. you do get better at identifying potential hazards."

"hopefully, where your fear becomes entirely rational, correct fear, i guess."

CLEARCHARGE

Flexible Assumptions about Life

flexible assumptions about life:

"what happened when i was 20 was quite shocking to me. i mean huge upheaval. it's like i was born, i came into this world, i accepted everything i was told, and for a long time, i believed it all. but i suppose as a child, that's typical."

"there's a docile quality to childhood. it's like in a dream. you instantly accept everything you think about the dream world. in a way psychologically that is the most docile state perhaps, in that you're completely led by your thoughts no matter how strange they seem when you wake up."

"and the first thing i remember about this lifetime is a long series of dreams. well then the breakdown happened to me and all the craziness. but what it did was, it called all my assumptions about life, about the world, about earth, into question. it's like it scrambled my brain. i knew some of my thoughts were crazy, were definitely false, but then what if some of the assumptions i had when i was, you know, "normal", also false? how could i be sure?"

"you mean normal assumptions about life and the world?"

"yes, the ones everyone accepts, like the population."

"like seeing is believing."

"exactly. that everything you see and hear in three dimensions is somehow real is the core assumption. but when you have hallucinations, when you're not sure what you're seeing or hearing is real and what is not anymore, that changes everything. and you can never change it back."

"not to lessen what you're saying, but i wonder if, what if everyone experiences hallucinations, maybe just slightly in some cases, you know, not enough to raise the alarm, but it's like, no one admits to it!? maybe it's not a minority? or not hallucinations, in that they're not real at all, but a whisper here and there, you know, they're not sure if someone spoke or not, they certainly can't see anyone, but they're none the wiser? maybe they see something and think, that's odd, but they don't really question it?"

"so, so called normal forever isn't the case for anyone? that wouldn't surprise me. the mind is a delicate thing. it's an upset or something strange that happens first."

"what happened to you was your assumptions were shaken and you became a sceptic."

"no, you're right. that's why you have to have flexible assumptions about life. what happens when you realize you were crazy about something you believed for a very long time is that the shock doesn't wear off for years. you wonder about everything. like are the people i see real, is the world full of philosophical zombies or illusions of people? are the voices i hear, without seeing anybody, real people calling to me, or not?"

"and it's not definitely all or nothing. what if the answer is sometimes?"

"right. it's like changing gears. you wake up and think, what am i going to assume about the world today? you don't want to get stuck into a mindset that collapses when you find out some part of it wasn't true and never was."

CLEARCHARGE

To Forget and to Sleep

to forget and to sleep:

"...well, no, that's not the point. i'm not theorizing or speculating or whatever you call it just for the sake of thinking a lot. there is a purpose to it. i want some answers. really, like how did i get here? why am i on earth? what happened before and so on."

"right, don't get so worked up. i wasn't attacking your opinion. it's just that some would say, you know, here's a guy that could better spend his time thinking about more practical things, things that you can verify, be sure of..."

"i know, i know. and that has its place. i'm not knocking that. it has its value. but don't you think there's a mystery here? this a pretty vaguely discussed topic but there must be a lot of people interested. when i was young, i mean, i had all these questions but then, you know, life got busier and they faded into the background but now i'm older they're back. you want to know what i think? and i don't mean to force my ideas on to you but i'm pretty sure about a few things."

"go right ahead. and i'm not saying i agree with what i said. i'm just communicating an opinion from somewhere or someone else."

"ok, we'll get your true opinion later. no, so i've been thinking a lot about what i'm thinking while i'm thinking, if that makes sense, becoming more aware of how my thoughts drift, kind of keeping track of what's going on inside my head."

"right. being aware of your thoughts."

"yes. so there are a couple of things i've noticed. one, you can forget something you were thinking about within two seconds. it's really that fast. you know, so, normally you may think you have a pretty sharp memory, that you remember most things, right? wrong. you can forget something instantly, especially when you're thinking fast. i mean, i know, sometimes you can recover that thought if you dig a little, right, sometimes you can get it back."

"yes, it's amazing when that happens. but i never thought i had a very sharp memory."

"and the second thing is, when you're falling asleep, there is an incredible onset of these random thoughts from the subconscious. it's as if they're from an alternative life where the rules and baseline assumptions about your world are slightly different. and in a dream, there is always a concept to it. say, for example, i'm dreaming about being back at school. ok, i'm not actually seeing that much, but i know it's at school, exams are on, i'm obviously going to fail because i don't remember the subject material anymore and so on. and the dreams are so powerful they wipe out whatever our regular daytime awake thoughts are. you know, so i can see that if life on earth begins in a dream which you wake up from actually being on earth, i can see how you might have amnesia about what your life previously was."

"and it's easy to forget anyway, right? so the argument we might make that we generally have a good memory is perhaps not so true?"

"we remember a few things very well and a few more things pretty well but which only disguises the fact that a lot of these things slip right past us."

"well i don't think you're wasting your time. i mean, it's definitely not something that anyone could say they have absolutely no interest in. it's something that concerns everyone on earth, where they come from, how did they get here... i don't know. i guess it's a different focus. and it's like the brain can only focus on a few things at a time, right? that's why we forget too, i guess, come to think of it."

"yeah. do you remember exactly what you were thinking ten seconds ago?"

CLEARCHARGE