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WHY IMAGINATION EQUALS MAGIC

May28

WHY IMAGINATION EQUALS MAGIC

“Mountains, Bruce, mountains,” the manager said.

“Mountains, Bruce, mountains,” Bruce said and gazed.

“Echolia, Bruce, echolia,” the manager said. “Echolia, Bruce–”

“Okay, Bruce,” the manager said, and shut the cabin door behind him, thinking, I believe I’ll put him among the carrots. Or beets. Something simple. Something that won’t puzzle him.

Philip K Dick, A Scanner Darkly

MAY 27, 2011. Ordinary reality—and all those dedicated to living in it and propagating it—is the residue, the leftover, when imagination isn’t being employed with intensity.

Ordinary reality is organized with a minimum of imagination. That is its hallmark.

Ordinary reality is what people usually think is (might be) changed by magic.

Yet, ordinary reality is constructed as a network of interconnected parts, in order to exclude imagination.

“I’m ordinary reality. Try to change me through imagination.”

This can provoke much hitting-head-against-brick-wall.

Of course, there are many venues in which imagination can be deployed. The arts. Science. Invention. In fact, the closer you look, the more you realize imagination can be used universally.

However, when applied against ordinary reality, it often seems imagination produces little or no change.

That’s an illusion.

It turns out that ordinary reality was created BY imagination—but with a strange plan. “We’ll use imagination to make a reality that seems to resist imagination.”

In other words, it’s a trick.

It’s like saying, “I’ll create a labyrinth, so I can wander around in it and get lost.”

Or: “I’ll pretend I have no imagination, so I can need imagination.”

Or: “Let’s build the greatest wall there ever was. Let’s use our imagination to construct that wall around us, let’s make it out of steel and make it a hundred feet thick, so that when we’re finished, we’ll be trapped inside and we won’t be able to figure a way out, even though we want to get out.”

Or: “Let’s build ordinary reality so that it seems to resist magic in every way…and then let’s say we really want to make magic.”

Nice trick.

How about this for a solution? We grasp the full meaning of this self-defeating strategy…and then, boom, with that insight, we find we can walk through walls.

Doesn’t work.

How about this? Particle by particle, we dismantle ordinary reality and put all those particles out into space and then we’ll able to make magic? Doesn’t work.

What does work?

As I’ve been saying, live through and by imagination long enough and intensely enough, and magic will occur.

Seems too simple, too straightforward, too daunting. But it’s true.

Because this is how you really build ordinary reality: you use enough imagination to make it exist and make it seem to resist imagination…and then you build into that process an ever-encroaching loss of your imagination…so that, at the moment the walls are finished, you appear to possess less imagination than you need to walk through the walls. Time-release self-defeat.

It’s another illusion, because you never lose one iota of imagination…but you pretend you do.

The way beyond this ridiculous complexity is: you live through and by imagination long enough and intensely enough…and you’ll eventually—as a side effect—be able to do magic.

THE TOWER

The tower came crashing down in the storm, not like on the Tarot card, but in pieces, one on top of the other, some splitting out sideways in the rain, and bales of money broke open and the bills drifted in the wind until they became wet enough to fall like flat stones. The tower at the end of the world was gone. The station was gone. No more transmissions. No more information. The egregious lies stopped. There was only the sound of rain and wind. And the thought of what tomorrow could bring.

He came out of the cave with a harpoon looking for fish. Then suddenly, he realized how ridiculous this was. The sound of rain didn’t mean fish. Why had he thought, over and over, that it did? He dropped the spear and looked up at the sky. He floated up off the earth.

JON RAPPOPORT

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NOTES ON LIBERATION

May28

A FEW NOTES ON LIBERATION

MAY 26, 2011. Liberation means freedom from closed systems.

It doesn’t mean entering into another closed system.

Freedom is the basic platform, from which new realities THAT HAVE NOT YET BEEN CONCEIVED can be imagined and created.

It’s a wide-open ballgame.

A person can never lose his imagination.

No matter what.

This is the wild card in every deck:

The potential for imagination.

There is no ultimate pattern of existence, no ultimate closed system.

So imagination isn’t reaching toward part or all of some Final Pattern. This is a major point.

Imagination is inventing something that’s never existed before.

There are infinities of things that have never existed before— IMAGINATION CREATES THEM…AND THEN AND ONLY THEN DO THEY EXIST.

We have no way of knowing what imagination will create.

This is non-system.

Imagination is individual. It isn’t collective.

When someone tries to explain “the ultimate reality,” he is inevitably looking at a product of imagination.

PAINTING:

Anyone can be a painter.

If someone denies that, he is clearly insane and shouldn’t be listened to. Period.

You begin. That’s the big secret. You begin.

You put paint on the paper or canvas.

I made this discovery in 1962, and it’s yours for only $49.95 and 2 boxtops from Quaker Oats and a cow.

You BEGIN.

Doesn’t matter what you do on the paper. You put on paint. See? You’ll have nothing to use but imagination.

Talk about being in the right place at the right time. There you are, brush in hand, paint on the brush, above the white space. Boom. You begin.

All the possible questions you could ask yourself to stall, including what seem to be the really sensible questions, are futile. Irrelevant. Born and bred of a culture that’s loony…so why bother.

Just paint. Go where you will with it. If you don’t like where you’re going, change directions. Change directions 50 times if you want to, just keep going.

And then on to the next sheet of paper. Keep painting.

There is no pattern in heaven or earth that’s relevant. You’re not only making up and inventing your painting, you’re making up (and changing) your aesthetic as you go along.

I predict that if you paint every day for 180 days, your life will change.

It’s all invention, creation, improvisation, imagination.

You’ll feel a liberation that’s very succulent and luscious and expansive.

Later on, you can try to find someone who shares your sense of liberation and can look at your work without preconceptions. But for now, JUST PAINT.

In a sense, when viewed from the angle I’m pursuing here, it doesn’t matter what system you teach people, if you’re going to teach. All systems are closed; they all share that property.

“Class, I have 12 systems here in a hat. I’m going to pick one out and teach it to you. I hope, as we go along, you’ll learn what a system is really like.”

The life cycle of a star; capillary blood flow; decimals; the function of the kidneys; tire repair.

It doesn’t matter.

(This why my audio seminars don’t present systems.)

Many people find it hard to believe anything exists outside of systems. Actually, most everything is outside systems.

If we, on Earth, ever enter a genuinely new era, this is one of the most important facts we’ll discover.

EXPERIMENT X:

Is this an experiment or a metaphor? So far—the latter. But it could become an experiment.

A teacher stands in front of a class of 50,000 students. He’s teaching them some sort of linguistics. Every student has a page of text in front of him.

The teacher says, “Okay, turn that page upside down.”

Then: “Pretend this is a language. Go home and write an essay on THAT.”

Of the students who turn in papers, some will suggest “trying to translate it.”

About 50 will try to translate it—whatever that means.

Of those 50, 49 will attempt to establish a system whereby it could be translated.

The remaining one student out of 50,000—if the teacher is lucky—will wing it. HE’LL MAKE UP A TRANSLATION.

He’ll invent something interesting.

This is a very informative result, although only one out of perhaps 100,000 people would think so. The other 99,999 people would ignore that one student who just imagined and invented a translation.

Actually, this is what education IS like.

Systems are taught. Exiting out of that environment, a tiny fraction of students emerge with the idea that the key is really imagination. And they are rarely noticed.

JON RAPPOPORT

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A NOTE TO MY READERS

May27

A NOTE TO MY READERS

AND…

THE MERLIN MEMOIR

MAY 27, 2011. For a moment here, I’m stepping away from my recent work to comment about it.

In case you hadn’t noticed, lately I’ve been pushing my exploration of imagination into new dimensions. And I haven’t been holding back.

The quality of emails I’ve gotten has been quite fantastic. There ARE people out there who’ve been looking for, wanting, something like this. Or they didn’t think they did until they saw it in my articles.

At the same time, I realize some readers have found it hard to stay on board. So what to do?

Do I try to dilute what I’m writing? Do I try to straddle both ends of a bridge?

Well, that’s a bit of a dilemma.

We’ve all been taught that “success” comes from adjusting your mode of communication to appeal to the widest possible audience. We have movies, TV, and media as examples of that.

But I’m not really in the business of doing a juggling act. I’m not trying to gauge a “model” based on who will stick around if I write about X versus who will stick around if I write about Y.

Take the word “imagination.” I could break down the meaning so the word appears to be “just slightly ahead of our time,” as the old commercial went. I could gear my articles about imagination so they would seem to be just a few feet beyond where most people are. I could try to advance in tiny increments—hoping not to lose readers.

Of course, that approach would deny everything I’ve been saying about how imagination works. It isn’t a tight protocol or a closed system or a step-by-step manual.

Now, if you go to the store on my site, you will find audio seminars like: Mind Control, Mind Freedom; The Transformations; and The Magic and Mystery of Dialogue—where I do present techniques and exercises that really work. They DO expand imagination and its power to create realities. But those exercises aren’t timid little flips and twists. They’re big engines that operate on a wide superhighway.

The point of those exercises—and these articles—is to EXPAND THE TERRITORY.

So in the end, regardless of what happens to “the business model,” I’ll keep going as I have been going. Taking things to the limit and beyond. Because there is no limit. That’s been my premise since the beginning, and it still holds.

If my email list shrinks down to six people, I’ll probably leave a close-out piece on my site and go back to painting, writing, music, and poetry/fiction full time.

I’m not in charge of how people react to these articles.

I just want you to know how I’m looking at the present situation—which certainly has an upside, in terms of the things some of you are saying in your emails to me. For which I’m very appreciative. Excited. Inspired.

This society, civilization, planet—whether or not we have current crises of large proportions—has been in a doldrum for a long, long time. And the reason for it is simple. As a result of various breakthroughs, people found themselves on the cusp of realizing that imagination and creative power WERE the next step.

But they were unwilling to take it. They stalled at the gate. They comforted themselves with other stories, other fairy tales. They were horses led to water, but they weren’t going to drink. Despite the fact that the human race had offloaded so many paralyzing myths, people found new forms of paralysis.

They found new fundamentalisms and re-found old fundamentalisms.

The future isn’t only about what imagination produces, it’s about imagination itself—as the recognized power source we use to drive us into untold realms and fulfillments.

Okay. That’s what I wanted to say for now.

Let’s move along to this:

ON THE SPACESHIP SS GRINDER, a gigantic bloated vessel hanging in space off the edge of the Milky Way, a rescue crew finds NO ONE. The cabins and offices and labs on all decks are empty. Clean and empty. The engines are fused.

After a six-month on-board investigation, a crew member discovers a sealed cylinder on a shelf in a small cabin. Opening it, he removes a handwritten note, titled:

Merlin speaks:

Look, I’ve been making universes for a long time. I don’t make a big deal of out of it because I don’t have to.

I crank them out. Some I build, some I create whole-hog in a few seconds, maybe less.

I gave up the robe and the beard and the scepter and the stone and the sword a little while after Arthur and that whole crowd faded.

Did you know you could create a minus universe? This isn’t anti-matter nonsense, and it isn’t a reversed mirror image of something else. It’s just minus. It basically ISN’T—but there it is.

I like those. It’s a kick. In fact, evidence is mounting you people live in a minus universe. The downside is you tend to mill around and screw things up. I’ve always said a person who would take up residence in a minus universe for longer than a year is nuts. He gets the sun, the waves, the beach, a few adventures in the city—it’s time to check out.

What is magic?

Imagination. Pursued long enough and intensely enough.

That’s all.

That’s all I do.

You’d think this would be an easy point to get across, but it isn’t.

I can make things vanish and reappear. It’s a side effect of imagination.

People deny the existence of magic on three counts: it’s impossible, it’s hard, or it’s a delusion.

I wasn’t born lucky. I worked at it for a long time. I didn’t practice making things disappear. I just lived by imagination. So it wasn’t a chore, it was what I wanted to be doing.

I lived through what some people call the old magic era, when lots of people were making magic all over the place.

And I lived through technological ages that would make yours look like a wooden wagon coming out of a cave.

One thing I notice about you—you’re hypnotizing yourselves right out of imagination. It’s quite a trick. It’s a kind of magic all its own.

I know places where the people are very wishy-washy, and I bet they’d pay you a pretty penny to teach them that trick.

Imagination is like love. You keep saying you don’t want it or you yearn for it or you’re looking for it—right up to the moment when it happens. Then you stop dead in your tracks, because you know this is it.

Imagination feels a little like the future, until you use it right now, and then you make the future and present. That may sound strange, but it’s true.

Once I had an altercation with a guy who claimed he was the god of a universe I made. Can you believe that? He told me he’d made it. It was all his. I explained he was a rank liar. Then on top of that, he told me he’d give me a free pass to get in!

Some people do that. They set up shop in a place you made and they go around selling other people on their story.

You’re being sold a lot of stories. You can tell, because sooner or later they always involve giving up a piece of freedom. First you pay, then you lose. It’s a double scam.

But the worst thing I see happening when I look at your home base is the novelty con. Whatever you’re interested in on Monday, on Tuesday it has to be something else. That’s a crime and punishment all rolled into one. It cuts the legs out from under anything that’s good.

See, that’s imagination at work, too, although you might not recognize it. Just a little below the surface, you’re convincing yourself you’re bored with something that lasts longer than five minutes. You’re creating your own boredom.

And no drug is going to cure that.

You imagine you’re “human beings,” and the various definitions of that fiction floating around would drive away tourists faster than swarms of bees. You’ve concocted patterns of life that are their own prisons. Some of your most impassioned and articulate spokesmen for freedom are pushing it like dishwasher soap. It’s evident their own lives are far from free.

Remember the old phrase, Midas Touch? These days, it’s the Android Touch. Whatever androids brush up against tends to develop androidal qualities.

The question is, do you want to get out of that?

Your world is a copy of itself. It’s enduring on that basis. Actually, it went to sleep a long time ago, but the replica lives on.

Like a cartoon.

I know, everything looks and feels as real as ever, but it’s animation.

When a person goes to sleep, his vague memory of the world behind and below him is a kind of sketch. When he stays asleep, the sketch BECOMES the world. That’s a bit of a metaphor, but it makes the point.

So you’re in and on Earth Two.

The engines of this ship worked for a while, but then they fused because they were entering, shall we say, another level of reality, and they just weren’t up to the task.

I watched the frustration grow as the slowdown occurred. Nothing could be done. Finally, the entire crew vanished. It was their first act of magic.

They went into a gray area, a limbo. They’re there now, trying to figure out how to proceed. Staying on the ship would have destroyed their bodies, as the sense of weight increased.

I believe the crew will eventually find a way out. When driven to the brink…interesting solutions occur.

Meanwhile, plastic cameos of the SS Grinder will be sold to millions of people.

Since I have time on my hands, here are a few of my lesser known quotes:

“You can create the same thing over and over, and eventually you’ll be about as alive as a table. Inject imagination into the mix, and everything suddenly changes. You can steer that boat anywhere you want to. You can steer it into nothing and build worlds.”

“More imagination equals more life. You can try to fight that formula and its corollaries, but you won’t win.”

“Sitting around in a cosmic bus station waiting for reality is what reality is. Everything else is imagination.”

“The most overrated word in any language is ‘exists.’”

“Traveling to places one has never seen is far different from creating something that never existed before.”

“Sooner or later, you will come across people who try to assert that every power is ‘inherent in the universe.’ They will describe such power. They will keep on doing this until they realize that nothing they have discovered begins to explain consciousness or imagination. You don’t have to care about any of that. All you need to do is create with imagination for a few million years, and everything will come clear.”

“You make me a painting of something that never was. I make you a painting of something that never was. The beginning of a true friendship.”

“Religion, metaphysics, spiritual systems, science—they all try to explain what ultimately exists. ‘Ultimate’ is a fabrication. Imagination proliferates endlessly, beyond any attempt to explain.”

JON RAPPOPORT

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PART 2, CRADLE TO GRAVE

May26

PART 2, CRADLE TO GRAVE, BABY

DON’T YOU DARE ROLL THE DICE, YOU SON OF A BITCH

MAY 26, 2011. Peer pressure, which is to say, family and friends, is a major force in the medical world.

It’s really a piece of the model.

It can work this way. Patient A is diagnosed with disease B. Actually, B isn’t a disease at all. It’s a nutritional deficiency. But the medical cartel is always looking to expand its dominion, like any ambitious church, so it labels whatever moves, wiggles, or vibrates a disease or a disorder.

“Hey, we throw a lot of stuff against the wall and see what sticks.”

It’s the infomercial pattern. “So you get the 12 knives at $39.95. That’s a $300 value. But hold on. If you order in the next five minutes, we’ll give you two sets for the same price, can you believe it? And the pork-intestine slicer. And the sharpener, plus the 50 napkins, and season tickets to the Opera is My Life lecture series at the Biloxi 7-Eleven…”

Patient A has been diagnosed with disease B, and therefore receives treatment C, which is a powerful drug that causes a little thing called DNA chain termination. Normal cell reproduction is disrupted.

The patient, on drug C, finds he can’t get out of bed in the morning without an overhead crane. His sister pours him into the car and takes him to the doctor, who says, “The disease is disrupting your cells.”

“What?” the patient says.

His sister pats him on the arm. “Listen to what the doctor is telling you.” she says.

The patient shakes his head.

“Doctor, I’ve read that the drug disrupts cells.”

The doctor smiles and nods.

“Yes, in rare cases, but this is different. It’s the disease doing it. We’re going to have to escalate the treatment. Increase the dose and add another drug.”

The sister nods sagely. She has a degree in house-sitting from a junior college.

The patient closes his eyes. A few tears leak and dribble down his cheeks. Which, of course, prompts the sister to say, “Do you think my brother should see a counselor, Doctor?”

“Might not be a bad idea,” he says. “I can set up an appointment with social services. I think they’ve straightened out the billing scandal down there.”

Flash forward a week. Patient A, who is now on a higher dose of drug C and a new drug, D, which favors disrupting immune-systemcells, is laid up with three infections. A phone call to the doctor, and another appointment, introduces patient A to drug E, an anti-viral, for which, in clinical trials, no efficacy has been established.

Two days later, the patient is vomiting and has diarrhea.

The social services counselor welcomes the pale sweating patient into her office. He is accompanied by his sister and her husband, for moral support. The husband does payroll for a local medical testing lab. He’s now on the case, assuring the patient the doctor has been handling his drug treatment properly.

The conversation with the counselor lasts 20 minutes. The counselor establishes that serious disease can trigger depression. The brother-in-law concurs. This astonishing insight about depression has, of course, consequences. A psychiatrist will probably prescribe one of the SSRIs. Prozac, Paxil.

“I started on Paxil four years ago,” the sister says. “It’s changed my life.”

She smiles and nods at the counselor.

The sister’s husband concurs.

“We had a little problem with the social stigma attached to these…disorders,” he says. “But we got past that. And never looked back.”

“Well,” the patient says, “I was on Paxil after the boating accident. Remember? A week later, I tried to burn down the flag pole in the back yard.”

“I’m glad you mentioned that,” the counselor says. “The psychiatrist will probably try Prozac instead.”

Flash forward again. The patient has been having hallucinations. His sister and brother-in-law tell him Prozac could not be the cause.

The patient says, “But I don’t usually think our dead mother is Big Foot dancing upside down on the ceiling.”

His brother-in-law gives him a hard stare.

“Listen, Bob, tough love isn’t usually my thing, but I’m going there now. You have to keep up the protocol. You can gut it through. We’re with you all the way, but you have to do your part…”

To which the patient replies: “Appreciate the pep talk, bro, but this isn’t friggin’ Afghanistan, and you aren’t my lieutenant.”

The patient’s sister frowns and shakes her head. She calls the psychiatrist later and says she thinks her brother is going over the edge into psychosis.

…Three months into this multi-drug treatment, the patient has another appointment with his doctor. The doctor tells him that despite these heroic pharmaceutical measures, what he suspected all along has come to pass. There is nothing more he can do. The disease has spread. He gives the patient two months to live.

After breaking down and weeping, the sister says to the doctor, “But he should continue taking the drugs, correct?”

The doctor offers a noncommittal shrug. “Research just hasn’t caught up yet to where we are.”

Two days later, the patient, through a herculean effort, staggers from his bed to the computer on his desk and begins to read about disease B.

It turns out there is a clinic in the Bahamas where doctors are using nutrients to treat even advanced cases—there are claims of success in some cases.

The patient makes a call and speaks with one of these doctors. The conversation lasts half an hour. Afterwards, the patient feels better. He feels hope.

Back in bed, he plans how he’ll get himself to the clinic.

Unfortunately, his sister, her husband, and a cousin, who’s flown in from Detroit, recognize patient A is smiling and seems a little better. This sends up red flags. He finally confesses he’s booking a flight to Freeport.

All hell breaks loose.

This is war.

The brother-in-law (who does payroll) handles the money-rip-off scenario aspect. “They’ll bleed you dry. Then they’ll leave you on the side of the road like a dog without a license.”

The cousin, who is a retired prosecutor with chronic shingles, adds the American-alone-in-a-foreign-land-without-a-support-system-they-can-do-anything-they-want-to-to you-and-there-is-no-recourse mantra.

The brother-in-law comes back for an encore with the they’re-just-a-bunch-of-quacks-they’re-not-real-doctors-if-they-had-anything-don’t-you-think-it-would-have-been-approved-and-everybody-would-be-using-it rumba.

Then the sister drops the you’re-crazy-what-will-people-think-you’re-thumbing-your-nose-at-the-only-family-you-have-left-I-always-knew-something-like-this-would-happen-from-the-time-you-were-a-kid you-thought-you-were-different-from-the-rest-of-us tonnage on her brother’s head.

A call comes in from the patient’s uncle in Fresno. The uncle is 92 and has good days and bad days in the nursing home. He tells the patient, “If they’re big men, stand near a doorway. They might give you a badge with a different name on it, if you ask them. Lace up your shoes after surgery.”

When the hubbub finally subsides in the patient’s bedroom, he closes his eyes and lies there in a rancid puddle of shame, resentment, and fear. His relatives go into the living room for a pow-wow.

The phone rings. It’s his friend Allan, a retired loan hustler.

“Listen,” Allan says, “I know what you’re going through. We have a group. I want you to come to a meeting. Every session starts with a member saying, “What’s the last stop on the train track?”

The patient mumbles, “Do they all go choo-choo then?”

“Just trying to help you, pal,” Allan says.

The patient dangles the receiver in his hand, holds it for a minute, then lets it drop on the rug.

Something is taking shape in his mind. Something that’s never occurred to him before.

The thought is interrupted as his sister raises her voice in the living room. She’s saying, “The shame he’s bringing on us. How can I tell my friends about this? We have to stop him from going. Look, here’s his plane ticket on he table.”

Now, it all comes clear.

He realizes that, even though he’s been diagnosed as terminal, he’s supposed to follow the advice of his doctor—who has nothing for him. It’s protocol. Social protocol.

Take the drugs, or stop them, but don’t do anything else. Don’t roll the dice. Rolling dice would be abhorrent.

The real message of his family is, just close your mouth, do what the doctor says, even if it’s nothing, and DIE.

He nods.

That’s it.

Don’t rock the boat.

Don’t switch tracks.

Don’t leave the bus.

The Bahamas. Sunny days. Lying on the beach with a cold vodka- soda, a little paper umbrella.

Maybe that’s just a pipe dream.

The chemo, the Prozac, the other drugs, or nothing—that’s the consensus.

He bangs his fist on the wall behind him.

His family comes rushing in.

“What’s wrong!” his sister says.

He holds up his hand.

“Nothing,” he says. “It’s all right. I want to talk to you.”

The sister, the brother-in-law, and the cousin quickly gather in a little semicircle by his side.

“What is it?” his cousin says.

“I’ve made a decision,” the patient says. He pauses. “I just want you to listen. Don’t interrupt me.” He starts to choke up, but brings himself under control. His face slowly settles into stone. “I’m…not going to Freeport. I…want to you to make sure my plot is ready in the cemetery. It’s supposed to be. Just check on it. I don’t want a big funeral. Family and close friends.”

His sister wails and drops to her knees. She grabs the carpet with her nails and tries to tug it off the floor. Her husband restrains her, pulls her back to her feet.

The cousin frowns and nods slowly.

“Everything’s been paid for,” the brother-in-law says.

The sister screams once. Then she covers her mouth with her hand and bends down and takes her brother’s limp hand. She kisses it over and over.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to be cruel, darling. We’re just so…concerned about you.”

The patient nods.

“I understand,” he says.

His face is composed.

“You want me to die so I’m not going to try to do anything else.”

Silence.

JON RAPPOPORT

EVE AND THE SNAKE RETOLD

May26

EVE AND THE SNAKE RETOLD

MAY 26, 2011. One fine day (every day was fine), in the floating place called Astral Island Y-96a4, or The Garden, Eve was sitting naked under a large tree working on her tan, when a long serpent approached, slithering through the tall grass.

Eve sat up and watched him. She and Adam were on their Multi-Dimensional Universe Tour II.

He was the color of old oil. The sun picked up rainbow highlights on his scales. The main thing about him was his smile. She’d seen it on the faces of used-car salesmen, New Age talisman peddlers, and agents.

“Hello, Eve,” he said, coming to rest at her feet. His voice was low and rich, like spoiled caviar.

“Where’s Adam?” he said.

“Oh, he went to Bold Foods to pick up some food,” she said.

“Really?” he said. “There’s a Bold Foods here?”

Eve pointed to three low hills in the distance.

“That way,” she said. “This is a hybrid island. Primitive and pristine on this side, overdeveloped out there in the flats. Tire recappers, gas stations, bars, thrift shops, a couple of drug stores, and a Dome Depot.”

The snake paused at this news.

“Well,” he said, “so you’re eating well?”

“Sure,” she said. “Lots of chips, the chicken noodle soup, salad bar, burgers. Chocolate cake.”

The snake sniffed the air.

“I was wondering if you know what tree you’re sitting under,” he said.

“This?” she said, patting the trunk with her hand. “There’s a plaque on the other side. Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I can smell the apples. Tart.”

“Yes, well,” the snake said, “there’s a rule. You can’t eat any apples .”

“I didn’t know that,” she said.

“I’m surprised,” the snake said.

“How would I know it? Adam and I just arrived last Tuesday.”

“I see,” the snake said. “So you haven’t been briefed.”

She frowned.

“What are you talking about?”

“When people land, they’re instructed on how to proceed. Usually, the clouds part, and the King comes down half-way and issues a few edicts.”

“Haven’t seen a king,” she said.

“Maybe he’s away,” the snake said. “I stand in for him then.”

“That’s good,” she said. “I guess.”

The snake stuck out his tongue, then withdrew it.

“But you see,” he said, “I can issue special dispensations. And for you, I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“Why would that be?” she said.

“Because the apples are quite delicious, and when you eat them, you automatically acquire wisdom. Essentially, you become more like the King.”

“Wisdom?” she said. “In general?”

She seemed a little puzzled.

“No,” he said, “you learn about the distinction between good and evil. It’s a tricky subject. The King knows all about it. It’s a source of his strength.”

“Good and evil,” she said. “For example, when someone is trying to sell you a used pickup with a cracked engine block?”

The snake gave her his big smile.

“Yes,” he said, “that would be one instance.”

“Over a few islands from here,” she said, “Adam and I were at this country club playing golf. On the sixteenth hole, I hooked my tee shot into the rough. I was in there, in the woods, trying to find my ball when a golf cart came whizzing by on the road. It stopped, a porky guy got out, and offered to help me. So we’re searching in all the bushes and tangles, and he says he can give me a good deal on a club membership. But I figured this was baloney, because what’s he doing way out on the sixteenth hustling memberships? Know what I mean? Besides, he doesn’t even have any clubs in his cart. He’s wearing a rug, his pants are checkered, his white shoes have little gold buckles on them. But you know, I didn’t want to call him out. Adam and I had been invited to play the course, so we needed to be polite. We keep looking for the Titleist, and he keeps up the hustle–”

“Okay! Okay!” the snake says. “I get it. But what about the tree and the apple?”

“What about it?” Eve says.

“It’s a very good apple.”

And then Eve turns on a kilowatt smile. She’s really quite lovely.

“Listen,” she says. “Adam and I have been around a block a few times. Right? We’ve visited thousands of these astral islands, and you’d be surprised how many times snakes have tried to run this same number on me. It’s a staple. There’s a book on it somewhere. The temptation, eat the apple, gain knowledge of good and evil, whatever that means, and then the Fall. Wow. I mean, come on. Who cares about good and evil? I know the difference. I’m not stupid. I don’t need to go to school on that. It’s simple. You’re free unless you lean on somebody else’s freedom. Case closed. Why you guys want to keep re-enacting it is beyond me. What’s the point? We should all bow down and support something that’s a scam to begin with? I’m just sunning myself here, Adam will be back from the store soon with goodies, and we’ll have an early supper. Then we might take in a movie.”

The snake coiled and uncoiled a few times.

“Suppose,” he said, “I decide to sink my fangs in your thigh?”

Eve reached behind her and brought out a thin flat L-slab of gray metal. She pointed it at the snake.

“Then,” she said, “I’d have to fill you full of energy that would rip most of your cells apart in under five seconds.”

“Hmm,” he said.

“Yeah. Hmm. Why don’t you find a nice little critter for dinner and leave us alone.”

The snake shook his neck and instantly reappeared as the king. He was large and thunderous in his blue robe, and his white beard swung back and forth under his chin. His eyes bulged, then relaxed back into his sockets. He stared at Eve.

“Haven’t I seen you before?” he said.

Eve nodded.

“Last summer. We stopped off here on the way to the circus at HT4ux. Just for the day.”

“Yes,” he said. “And you and I played out this little scene then.”

“Right,” she said.

“So what are doing back again?”

“We came for the apples. I really like the apples. Very tart. They’re hard to find. Most of the fruit these days is fibrous. It’s dead.”

He nodded.

“Well,” he said, “I have a few discount coupons for the mall. They get fresh fruit in every day from locals.”

“We’d appreciate that,” Eve said.

The king pondered for a few moments.

“No problem. You know, the plaque on the tree. I’m thinking of changing it. Good and evil was a mistake from the beginning. It just didn’t add up. Why should knowledge of good and evil be a bad thing? Redundant, yes. Bad, no? The writer was looking for a hook. I don’t think he found it.”

“No,” she said. “It’s a misdirection no one really cares about. But in all fairness, what really works? Adam and I have discussed it, and we couldn’t come up with anything, either. Eat the apple and lose your power? Won’t be able to sleep at night? See, that would be going the other way, and still it doesn’t compute, because then there’s no temptation to eat the apple. The story just got off on the wrong premise, and there was no way to fix it after that.”

The king sighed.

“Tell me about it,” he said. “I’m still amazed so many people bought in.”

“Well, the guilt thing, I guess, delivers a lot of mileage…although Adam and I have never been prone to falling for it.”

The king reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out three wrinkled coupons. He bent down and handed them to Eve.

“Good until Christmas,” he said.

Eve laughed.

“Let’s not get started on that one,” she said.

The king pointed at her.

“No guilt, no redemption,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “You know, Adam has this script he’s been trying to peddle for a while. You might take a look at it.”

“He have an agent?” he king said.

“I’m his agent,” Eve said.

“Well, then…”

“Take you an hour to go through it,” she said. “Lots of action. The dialogue’s pretty straightforward.”

“Give me the bottom line.”

“Adam and I create the world and trap the king.”

“The old switcheroo. Might have legs in an art house.”

“We’re not looking for boffo. Starting small.”

“What’s the budget?”

“Four-five mill. Chicken feed.”

“When you get home, check with the Pope. Tell him to call me.”

“Why would he bankroll it?” Eve said.

“The Church feeds off criticism. They get an outrage and sympathy bump. Figures show it. Collection plates. Church attendance.”

“Maybe they could issue a statement when we’re ready for release. Condemning it.”

“Oh, they will…”

“For the extras on the DVD, we could do a sit-down with you.”

The king thought about this.

“If things don’t pick up soon,” he said, “I might even take a small part.”

“Who’s your agent?” Eve said.

“On most deals,” the king said, “the Vatican.”

“Like they need the money.”

He shook his head.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “They run me. My cut of their action just about keeps me in in Kleenex.”

JON RAPPOPORT

WHEN THE WORM TOOK OVER

May26

WHEN THE WORM TOOK OVER

MAY 25, 2011. Everybody on astral island W-53A2K was free, young, happy, and wild.

Except one worm that moved slowly through the soil.

In his younger days, he’d wanted to write The Great W-53A2K Novel, but his dream had now taken on a new shape.

On a long flat stone near the river, across from the palace where people ran and played in the small grove of purple trees, the worm inscribed a series of indelible smears in the local language.

Five years later, a young shepherd found the stone, took it to the palace, where it was examined by a bevy of drunken scholars. Its message, in essence, was: THE WORM IS GOD.

A general meeting was called, and after much hilarity, a verdict was agreed upon:

“Let’s make the worm God. It might be fun.”

So a search was mounted, and they eventually discovered the creature under a rusty plow by a hay barn near the river. He was taken on a white satin cloth to the palace and installed on a throne.

A scribe was appointed to note and convey his commands.

The first worm edict was: YOU’RE ALL CRAZY AND I’M SANE. THEREFORE, STOP MAKING MAGIC. NO MORE TELEPATHIC TRANSMISSIONS, SPONTANEOUS MATERIALIZATIONS, OR SUNDAY BREAKFASTS. SUNDAY IS FOR CHURCH. I’M THE GOD. SO I CONDUCT THE SERVICES. GATHER HERE, LISTEN TO MY WORDS, AND HEED THEM. WE’RE GOING TO WAR, WHEN I SELECT A SUITABLE ENEMY. DIVERT THE RIVER AND DRY OUT THE BED. WEAR CLOTHES. NO MORE NAKEDNESS. PRAY TO ME AT BREAKFAST, LUNCH, AND DINNER. FORGET YOUR NAMES. YOU HAVE NO NAMES. BURN THE FIELDS. IF YOU DREAM AT NIGHT, REPORT YOUR DREAMS TO THE SCRIBE AND I WILL INTERPRET THEM. LEVITATING IS A FELONY. ON TUESDAYS, EVERYONE WEARS A BLINDFOLD. ALL DAY. NO DRINKING WATER ON WEEKENDS. ALCOHOL IS BANNED. ILLNESS IS A SIN PUNISHABLE BY DEATH. NO WRITTEN OR SPOKEN SENTENCE MAY BE LONGER THAN SIX WORDS. ADVERBS ARE OUTLAWED. STOP WEEDING GARDENS. TRAVEL IS ILLEGAL. ADDRESS ME AS HE WHO CREATED THIS PLACE. DO NOT SHOW YOUR TEETH FOR ANY REASON. FISHING IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH. WALK SLOWLY. WEAR ONE SHOE. EXTINGUISH ALL LIGHTS AFTER SUNSET. EAT STALE BREAD. BY A SYSTEM YET TO BE DETERMINED, HAPPINESS WILL BE QUANTIFIED IN UNITS. EACH PERSON MAY EXPERIENCE THREE UNITS A YEAR. MEMORY IS OUTLAWED. SPECULATIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE MUST BE CLEARED THROUGH ME.

The scribe read the edict to a throng gathered outside the palace.

Afterwards, the laughter went on for several hours.

One by one, the people disappeared. Winked out where they were standing. The last to go was the scribe.

So now, on astral island W-53A2K, the worm, alone on his white cloth on the throne, in the palace, ruled no one.

“It’s a shame,” he said. “I was going to create a whole new civilization. Gift cards, cell phones, subways, Oprah, news headlines, law schools…”

Suddenly, a thin man in a suit appeared in the throne room and stepped forward.

“Your Majesty of Majesties,” he said. “I’m here from TY437UIS49Qv-32-ITYD. It’s quite an advanced operation, and we just lost our God in a tsunami. Terrible thing. We’re interviewing candidates for the job. The superstructure of our society has 2Q-/%yuv7* layers. Very complex. Maintaining order is a top priority. I have a feeling you might be right for the job.”

Silence.

The worm gazed at the thin man for a long time. The man didn’t seem to mind waiting.

Finally, the worm spoke.

“I assume there would be conditions. A contract of some kind.”

The man nodded.

“Yes, sir. I have a copy with me. Basically, you would exert unlimited power. Quarterly reviews of your actions would be compared to a Standards Board Outlook long form, which was drafted for the purpose of assuring our population would remain in a servile and malleable state of mind.”

“So, for example,” the worm said, “total destruction is out of the question.”

“Well, of course.”

“And devastating storms, floods, magnetic shifts, earthquakes and the like would be adjudicated against a grid of ongoing operational control.”

“There are clauses which cover that, yes.”

“You have the landing platform of a myth structure on which I could credibly alight?”

“I believe so, sir. Its cardinal premise is ‘the lowest shall be highest.’”

The worm considered this.

“I’m the only one who can perform magic.”

“Goes without saying. Over the course of twenty centuries, we’ve scrubbed the memory of it from the collective consciousness.”

“Oh,” the worm said, “you have a collective consciousness?”

“We do,” the man said. “Its propagation is Job One. Actually, it’s a fiction, but a widespread belief in it is as effective as the real thing—if there were a real thing.”

“Yes,” the worm said, “I believe I understand. Now, if I wanted to change my identity, even my appearance…”

“This could take place gradually, over a suitable period of time,” the thin man said. “For example, you could become a seventeen-year-old boy at the height of his sexual power. There are coteries of girls which could be made available. But that’s just one possible scenario. We’re flexible on the details.”

“An old man holding a scroll sitting in a thundercloud, a radiant figure floating down from a cherry tree, a fierce hawk diving through still blue air to seize prey, a troll surfacing from a pond, a hybrid genetically engineered military leader holding an electronic paralyzing whip, a priestess adorned in gleaming metal astride a magnificent stallion…”

“All those, and more,” the man said.

Again, silence.

“And this would be a permanent job?” the worm said.

“That is the whole point, sir,” the man said.

“You are continuing to degrade the intelligence and energy of the population, over time?”

The thin man nodded.

“We have a medical establishment dedicated to that goal. Drugs. They depress function.”

“While mitigating symptoms.”

“Yes.”

“I’m interested,” the worm said.

“I thought you might be,” the man said.

“What about my rake-off from taxes?”

“After your ascension, you start in at eleven percent. That figure increases each year by one percent, based on a positive report from the Standards Board Outlook Committee, until you max out at forty-nine percent.”

“And who holds the other fifty-one percent?”

“We do.”

“Who is we?”

“Well, sir, it’s a question you’re not permitted to ask.”

“I see. Was that why your recently deceased God was wiped out in the tsunami? He asked the question?”

“We had to send a message. After all, we watch God.”

“And who watches you?” the worm said.

“Even I’m not privy to that information,” the thin man said. “I’m told it’s an infinitely receding series of control centers. But that may be just a cover story.”

“Can you be promoted?”

“Yes.”

“What about me?”

“No. You’re God.”

“Can I write a book?”

“Of course. We would consider that a plus.”

“Where would I live?”

“As far as the people are concerned, your home is in the sky. Actually, you and your staff would occupy a villa overlooking the sea in temperate zone 4A04dtL.”

“Why have a God at all?” the worm asked. “Why not make one up?”

The thin man pursed his lips.

“It’s a position. It exists. Someone has to issue commands, edicts, and arbitrary decisions.”

“There would be churches in my name?”

“Churches, temples, cathedrals, small far-flung franchises.”

“After the unfortunate tsunami, you could have introduced a double of the old God.”

“We thought of that, but we have the opportunity to stimulate the population with a Great Change. It will be said you are the inheritor of the mantle, by His decree.”

“Which means you’ll have to announce that he died.”

“No. We’ll say he has important business elsewhere, where things need to be cleaned up.”

“Then I’m simply his deputy,” the worm said.

“The scepter will be passed. Permanently.”

“Do you have television?”

“A form of it. There are no screens. Electromagnetic waves of meaning distributed over the whole system.”

“I can promise to give much and yet give little?”

The thin man paused. He moved a step closer to the throne.

“Sir, let me make this very clear. Your job is to promise everything and give nothing.”

“Why?” the worm asked.

“Because we’ve found, through trial and error, that things work out best that way. The total hoax is the most effective hoax.”

“In other words,” the worm said, “the people pretend I’m a giving God.”

The thin man snapped his fingers.

“You’ve got it,” he said.

“Where do I sign?” the worm said.

JON RAPPOPORT

THE MAGIC UNIVERSE

May25

THE MAGIC UNIVERSE

MAY 25, 2011. When you throw off the myths and fairy tales and diversions and distractions, when you offload the various cosmologies and religious superstructures and hierarchies, and when you stop being hypnotized by science and its speculations on origins, you are left with a sense of relief, because you no longer have a compulsion to fall back on the idea of The Sacred.

People who are devoted to some notion of the Sacred…well, they’re hooked on that. They firmly believe it is an existential category, and without it everything would disintegrate or spin into chaos or suddenly shrink down into incomprehensible babble. That’s what they think. They’re operating from a basis in which they simply don’t understand the range of imagination and what it offers.

They’re really taking one tiny slice of what imagination can produce and blowing it up into a unity (“the Sacred”) that is for them the whole ballgame.

Sacred is the basic umbrella they walk around under all the time, and it’s the ultimate backup when they have to find a backup.

But Sacred is simply one INVENTED idea/feeling.

It tends to decay over time, and then universe becomes a fetish. Qualities are ascribed to it by puerile minds.

I say all this because magic is definitely not the same thing as sacred.

And people have them confused.

Magic, vis-a-vis the universe, is all about the ability to make changes in space and time, so that what appears to be a billiard-ball cause-and-effect system opens up into a reflection, confirmation, and fulfillment of desire. One’s own desire. And this happens in an uplifting expansive way.

Charting the course of a person’s life can be done in myriad ways, but one way is by discovering how his desires change over time. However, there is a missing element: what does really and most profoundly and expansively desire?

And does he ever discover this?

Or does he skim across the surface?

And if he does discover this, does he then create action that will lead to the fulfillment of that desire?

These and other related questions lead you toward magic vis-a-vis the world.

JON RAPPOPORT

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FRED MEETS GOD

May25

FRED MEETS GOD

THE EXTENT AND DEPTH OF HUMAN CONDITIONING

MAY 25, 2011. Here is a principle for you. To understand how deep human programming goes, you have to view the extreme possibilities in the opposite direction.

If you believe there are ten things in this universe, only ten, and most people are aware of three, then you can say they are minus-7. Their conditioning is keeping them from noticing 7 things. Get it?

But of course, there aren’t only ten things in the universe. You’ve missed the extreme possibilities. Let’s say, in truth, there are a quadrillion to the quadrillionth-power things in this universe—and you just found that out. If you know that now, then you say the people who are aware of only three things in the universe are programmed to an incredibly greater degree than you originally believed. Their blindness is their programming.

If you want to understand the depth of human programming, you need to be able to view the extreme possibilities in the opposite direction.

In the articles I’ve been writing about language in the last few months, I’ve been pointing out that many possible kinds of language exist, including those that haven’t been invented yet…and it is ingrained conditioning that prevents people from realizing this.

They’re programmed to communicate in subject-action verb-object sentences, or subject-being verb-adjective sentences.

I’ve suggested, for example, that languages can be invented in which nouns are also verbs…rays and streamers and energies of action radiate from them. These nouns are things and they are actions all rolled up into one.

I’ve further proposed that these nouns could, while having great impact, change their meanings radically, over and over.

I’ve suggested that it is the viewer, the reader (in the case of written text) who, THROUGH IMAGINATION, would find and attribute and invent these changing meanings.

A language of dynamic imagination…

Of course, in order for such languages to appear and be used, human beings would need to escalate their reliance on imagination. Which would create new dimensions and layers of consciousness.

And if we conceive of the radical possibilities of these invented languages (which I’ve been painting for the past year), and we compare them to the kind of language-awareness that’s prevalent in Earth cultures, we can see that the depth of the restrictive programming about language is much greater than we supposed.

I choose not to focus much on the conditioning side of the coin—I’m interested in the upward breakthroughs.

So in this piece, I want to try to give you an example.

Imagine that you’re looking at a shape on paper. It has four or five parts and they flow through and around each other. You begin to use your imagination on it. You begin to invent and therefore find meanings in this complex shape. All in all, you’re going to look at this shape for about ten minutes, and you’re going to imagine/invent what you can.

Well, let’s say that in the space of that ten minutes, for a second ortwo, you’re going to imagine a particular flash of ideas/images/meanings/sensations…..and in that second or two, EVERYTHING I write from now on in this piece, after this intro, is going to be that flash, conveyed to you through your own imagination, IN THOSE ONE OR TWO SECONDS, ZAP BOOM, ZOW.

Which is, of course, just a tiny fraction of what you’re going to invent/see in that shape in 10 minutes…just a tiny fraction, but it’s there, it’s indisputably there. Pretend that’s so.

Everything I’m going to write from now on in this article is going to be what flashes for you in two seconds of looking at that complex shape, in a language that has just been invented.

This is what I mean by EXTREME POSSIBILITIES.

This is what I mean by shaking off the doldrum of Earth culture.

And if you ask, is this complex shape you’re looking at a really cardinal shape in this new invented language, I’m going to say: no it isn’t. In fact, it’s one of the more ordinary shapes in that language which has 50 million different shapes.

Okay?

Ready?

Here we go.

Fred is a helluva guy. He’s made 50 universes I know about. They’re interesting places. He just dreams them up and pops them into existence. Bang. Like that.

He’s pretty cheerful, too. He has a place over by the river and the tigers. He doesn’t try to tame them. Couldn’t if he wanted to. They come running at him while he’s out for a walk, launch themselves at him, and he puts up his hand and stops them. But they stop him, too. It’s a standoff, everybody hanging in mid-air, until it’s time to fall down and out wheezing and sneezing and laughing. That’s our provincial version of a picnic.

Anyway, a few months ago, Fred was roaming around, a long way from here, and he came across this universe that had an entrance like a big mall. There was a glowing sign above the entrance:

MAGICAL WEIRD SECRET FANTASTIC ESOTERIC FABULOUS ILLUMINATING ENLIGHTENING ULTIMATE PLACE.

A guy in a tattered doorman’s uniform stood by the door.

“How much?” Fred said.

“Twelve bucks cover, two-drink minimum. The band doesn’t show up until eleven.”

Fred handed him a hundred. The guy blinked, smiled, stepped aside, and Fred walked through the door.

Inside it was ink black. Little holes in black cloth covered the ceiling. Gold glints showing through.

Fred walked into another dark room where there were all sorts of paintings on the walls and altars and tiny candles in long rows. He moved along into a blue dome, where men were standing around measuring things. Globes, plants, stuffed creatures. A inscribed plaque hung over a big blue cube. “Sacred Geometry.” Fred watched the men measuring things for a minute and then walked to the exit and into the nightclub, which was almost empty. A few people sat at the bar. At the end of the bar, he saw a blank door in the wall.

As he approached it, a big guy in a jump suit blocked his way.

“For employees only,” he said.

Fred nodded.

“Well,” he said, “I’d like to go inside. How about five hundred.”

Fred flashed his roll, peeled off five bills, and the big guy snatched them out of his hand.

“You get two minutes,” he said.

Fred stepped past him, opened the door and went in.

It was an old office with a light bulb hanging on a wire from the ceiling. Behind a battered desk, a man sat looking at big ledgers. He glanced up and waved Fred to a chair. Fred sat down.

The man looked up.

“What can I do for you?” he said.

“Just trying to get the lay of the land,” Fred said.

“Well,” the man said, “I’m the boss. God.”

“Really.”

“Right.”

“You own this place?”

The man smiled.

“I own everything,” he said.

“That’s a broad term.”

“Anything you can see, anywhere you go, it’s mine.”

Fred leaned back in his chair.

“So how do you play it?” he said.

The man looked at Fred for a few seconds.

“You some kind of hipster?” he said. “Basically, nobody leaves this universe. That’s the rule. And it’s a good rule, because there’s nowhere else to go.”

“But I came from somewhere else,” Fred said.

“You think you did,” the man said, “but if it’s real I own it. Get it?”

“I think I do,” Fred said.

“Of course,” the man said, “with somebody like you, which we don’t get too often, there are arrangements that can be made.”

“Sure,” Fred said.

“Make me an offer,” the man said.

“I won’t punch a big hole in space-time,” Fred said.

“What?”

Fred said it again.

“Wise guy, huh?” the man said.

Fred smiled.

“Just chewing the fat,” he said.

“I could call security and have you locked up.”

“Yeah,” Fred said. “but wherever you put me, I would still have access to space-time.”

Silence, as the man stared at Fred.

“Okay,” he said, finally. “Let’s take it down a notch.”

“Good idea,” Fred said. “I’ll give you this.”

And he produced a high stack of gold bars standing on the floor.

“Real stuff?” the man said.

“Hundred percent pure,” Fred said.

“What’s your game?” the man said.

“Just nosing around,” Fred said. He paused. “I make you for a middle manager. Somebody put you in charge and they went off. You’re God by appointment. Interim. But you’ve been here a long time. And whoever gave you the job, the one who made this whole continuum…for him it was just a lark. He popped it, then needed a deputy. You’re running a protection racket. You collect skim. You probably have a few good hypnotists working for you. Some PR people. They try to keep things smooth.”

There was a long silence.

The man stood up.

“If it exists,” he said, “I made it and it’s mine.”

“Sure,” Fred said. “Play out the string.”

“You’re guilty.”

“Of what?”

“I could list fifty violations,” the man said. “It all comes down to denying I’m the one and only creator.”

“Yeah,” Fred said, “that would be it. I’ve heard it before. I was hoping this place would be a little more interesting, but…same old same old.”

The man’s face turned purple.

“I’m in the BOOK,” he said.

“Right,” Fred said. “I was in a place once where people wrote a book apout me. I laughed for a long time until they couldn’t stand listening to it, and they burned it.”

“Well,” the man said, trying to pull himself together. “That’s your problem. I’ve got mine.”

“You have no idea,” Fred said. “But eventually, I bet, you will.”

He turned to leave and felt a strong pulse at his back. It was one of those stay-where-you-are tentacles…he shrugged it off like a slow Thursday afternoon and disappeared.

Fred gets around. He brings my wife and me exotic little souvenirs from his trips, and we have them hanging on the wall of our living room. They’re usually geometric knick knacks. He tells us they represent what he calls “one-and only” places. People prop up some invisible celebrity who lives far away from them and claim he made their particular continuum. I don’t quite get it. It sounds crazy. If I needed that kind of thing, I’d vote for Fred—but he’d just start that laughing thing. Truth be told, my wife and I are getting a little tired of the decorations on the wall. It’s building up into a clutter. She’s almost ready for a trip to the Void. That’s where you stop creating anything for a while. It’s a zero state. Very refreshing.

We used to run a spa for it. That’s where we met Fred. He came in one day and we let him use a void-room for a few years. When he came out, he said, “You know, if they made bullshit into money, everybody in every universe would be a billionaire.” For that one we inscribed a sign, and it’s above the sink in the kitchen, next to the little two-inch coil that supplies all the energy we need in this continuum.

Once, three guys from somewhere showed up and tried to snatch it. My wife and I launched our striped selves at them, and there wasn’t much to clean up afterwards.

BOOM. Your two seconds are up. And that’s what you invented in two seconds of looking at one shape…which you’re going to keep looking at for ten minutes…and that shape is one of 50 million in that language.

Chew on it.

Think about it.

Imagine extreme possibilities.

JON RAPPOPORT

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ENGINEERING A COCKEYED CONTINUUM

May24

ENGINEERING A COCKEYED CONTINUUM

MAY 24, 2011. Well, we tried to build a universe, you know, a really big one, but it kept falling apart. They shipped in some seal they said was unbeatable, but that didn’t even begin to help close the cracks.

It must have been a design flaw, but the architects swore it wasn’t their fault. And the bio-labs were useless.

The engineers tried, but they were on patch-patch duty around the clock, and then big sections caved in and blew out through the wormholes.

It was a mess.

One guy, I don’t know, some kind of nomad on independent contract, just laughed and told us we were going about it the wrong way. He said all we needed to do was stand back and set up a really good movie projector. Something like that. Nobody paid any attention to him.

Then, finally, a domehead scholar showed up, and in three days he solved the whole problem.

Religion.

Going that way brought everything into focus.

Turned out it was the universal seal, and those huge drifting pieces came back together like filings drawn to a magnet.

Of course, you then convince the inhabitants they need to bow and scrape and believe in one creative force that lies outside themselves. You can sidestep the need to appoint actual deities by claiming they’re all invisible. That would be a tough sell for about five minutes, and then everybody would settle in.

Just a matter of transference (non-Freudian), through which the inhabitants yield up their native capacity to do magic to gods they’ll never see or know.

When, in the general population, symptoms of “magic-repression” rear their heads, you call it something else, and you distract everybody by inventing ceremonies and rituals.

Scriptures are nice. Particularly, if they’re said to have been found rather than concocted.

Eventually, people won’t even know what you mean by the word magic. They’ll claim they’re confused, it doesn’t makes sense, it must have happened in a distant past too obscure to reconstruct.

Centuries later, everybody is used to being inside the continuum. Permanently.

Of course, that wasn’t what the original designers had in mind when they started building the universe, but they were willing to make sacrifices to get the job done.

And that movie projector deal was apparently too far-out for them to grasp. They could have saved themselves a whole lot of time and suffering, if they’d caught on to the concept that reality can be manufactured whole-hog. Boom. It doesn’t need piecemeal construction at all.

You put one guy in the Void, which is to say, you ask him to stop creating altogether, and once he does that and gets used to the state of mind, he unrolls a whole universe from scratch, from nothing, in a few minutes, at most.

If you want to go into his continuum and see what’s it like when he’s done, you can. But there are no gods, there is no ritual, there are no hierarchies, and there is no contention of SACREDNESS about his art.

And the measurements of things? You know, the fact that a leaf on a nut tree is 5.1265 to the length of its 12.4902 branch…and that ratio is also found in the eye to the nose of a certain fish and the horn to the leg of a particular mammoth and the tooth to the jaw of a monkey…it was just the way it was. Interesting, but no big deal.

You can visit this universe whenever you want to. And leave, too. There aren’t any entrance or exit signs. You just hop in and hop out.

It might be fun, it might be thrilling, it might be ecstatic, it might be boring. Up to you to decide.

You don’t like this one, there are plenty of others to see.

One—that is to say, the illusion there is only one—is always a problem. The continuum that has Earth in it—they call it the physical universe. To a lot of people who look at it from the outside, it’s a joke, because, well, the illusion is operating there. All manner of weird things going on. The pride in living in the “only one,” the continuous manufacturing of humility, too, as the flip side of that coin. Those people are really bizarre. Even the scientists. They keep figuring out more and more about the construction details—which, of course, is okay, if that’s what they want to do—but what do they have in the end? What do they think is going to be the result of all that work? Seems like another twist on religion. You could just hand them a complete set of blueprints, but they’d probably make a Scripture out of it. I once knew a guy off the X-145 who tried to set himself up as a god in one of these continua. No, really. He’d come out on his balcony every morning in a multi-colored bathrobe and holding, what was it, a lamp in his hand. I forget what it was supposed to signify.

He could talk, I’ll give him that. And he’d draw small crowds. But they thought he was funny. They laughed and took pictures. The guy said he had created that continuum and therefore he was in charge of it. I mean, even if he had made it (which he hadn’t), so what? He could suddenly make up all sorts of rules? The only basic rule is, don’t punch a hole in a continuum somebody else created. That is, unless it’s one of those “only ones,” and the people there need a kick in the pants…

JON RAPPOPORT

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