The most universal number

Pick the most universal number:
0
1
2
3

You could say “0” because everything starts from the zero ground-state. You could say “1” because one is the fundamental unit of every other number (dividing or multiplying by one yields the same result; every integer is constituted of ones). You could say “2” because everything in the world is posited on dynamic opposition, the yin-yang of existence, without which nothing is.

But I think the most universal number is 3. Here is my reasoning.

Three is the base of all numbers (i.e. all multiples of three) that embody the principle of self-replication. Therefore it replicates itself into a universe and if it didn’t there would be no universe. So it’s the universal number.

Zero is not self-replicating. It ain’t even there. One does not replicate itself. One is one and all alone and evermore shall be so. Two does not replicate. Now there you might argue. But just because A and B get together and interact and cause C to emerge, whether C be an idea, an emotion, a new widget, or a human being, twoness is a state of division. It represents a transitional state. Three, which incorporates the fruit and materialization of the interaction, represents a new wholeness which rolls over easily into a new replication.

Note how the three-based rhythm creates a feeling of universal ongoingness. I am speaking of the waltz, as in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the camera pans down the length of a huge space station while the Blue Danube plays gloriously on the soundtrack.

Noah's ark was a two-by-two affair. The ark of this universe is a three-by-three vehicle. All aboard!

Fallen to earth

We are meteorites. That is, we are what is left when as meteors in our downward trajectory to this planet most of us burned up in the atmosphere. We're lucky to be here at all, but wasn't our moment of glory in the getting here, not the surviving? We burn brightly and light up the sky. Then it's over. Almost.

So what do we do with this big rock of ourselves that's left? Well, maybe we could dig into the core of it and see if there's any ore in there. There is a legend that meteorite ore is useful in the crafting of magical weapons. Perhaps we are supposed to fight some dragon. Is that what we're doing here?

You know, we really have no clue why we're here. But I am sure of one thing: there is a reason. I haven't figured out what my purpose is yet. But I know there is one. I just hope I find it before the last glow in the core of this meteorite finally fades into black.

Loving what is

According to chapter 2 of Douglass A. White’s Observer Physics, the word "believe" derives from the Indo-European root *LEUBH, which means to care, desire, love; with the intensifier prefix be. (This, by the way, is in the context of a discussion of four basic paradigms of belief: a priori, a postiori, empirical, and deliberate. Qubikuity is an example of the latter, in which an exploratory belief set is being articulated. Every blog post here is a piece of the puzzle, which is sometimes expressed more formally and other times more peripherally.)

Thus, to believe is to love being.

Of course, the idea of “belief” is much debased because today, most beliefs that are held, championed, and contest with each other for supremacy tend to be very low-order beliefs and have little integrity. A belief lacking integrity may be very persuasive to a believer but it fails to persuade non-believers because it is probably internally inconsistent, as well as inconsistent with general experience, scientific facts, or reason itself.

Why should we not resuscitate this oft-maligned term, the victim of shoddy usage? As we embrace the isness and while abandoning or rejecting beliefs that do not suit, let us adopt an attitude of belief whereby we love what is. Because we are worthy to recognize beauty and truth where we find it, and respond with our sensitive acceptance of that quality.

The results could be unbelievable.

Consciousness is quantum

Consciousness is quantum. Experience is fractal.

Consciousness may be expressed as shifts between integral dimensions (1,2,3,4,5,6…) Thus it lends itself to talking about in terms of states in the same way as we talk about states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, plasma. Consciousness has the property of resolving into a discrete categories of functioning and can take the identity of individual modules of consciousness (my consciousness, your consciousness, his consciousness, her conscoiusness). Individual means undivided: i.e., integral.

The fundamental property of “having” consciousness is that it one is alone in that self-contained field. The root of who we are is consciousness itself in its quantum state. However, when experiences begin to accrete to our identity, in the random and fractional quality of real numbers (3.14, 9.86, etc.), we adhere to the infinitely varied fractal patterns that occur in our individual lives. And the stories we tell about our lives often develop into infinite real number sequences: 3.14159265…, 9.86965056… and so on. These stories are not individual in the sense of integral consciousness states. Like fractals, their forms are extraordinarily complex and may seem random and chaotic on the surface. Chaos mathematics might restore some sense of underlying orderliness to the fabric of these stories, but essentially we are dealing with fractional dimensions when we enter the world of experience.

Nonfractal objects are things like lines, rectangles, cubes. We don’t experience life this way unless we abstract out these objects. The fractal object expresses life as we meet it: a constantly shifting, unpredictable, seemingly random territory inhabited by a multiplicity of selves (the components of psychological subjective reality).

When we ask who we are, we can only temporarily alight in the quantum. Quantum, nonfractal states do not appear to occur naturally. Those quantum integers are quickly grabbed by free-floating fractal functions and appropriated as coefficients to produce the infinite textures of our lives.

...And the gods made love

The most important event possible at this point in time is that our galaxy is brushing up against another galaxy. Think of that. What a powerful, thrilling moment this is in the life of our cosmos. And it's just starting to happen, perhaps here in the last few years, astronomers think. And we're here to bear witness to this very rare and amazing commingling of the giant godbeing forms that are living intelligences of the macrocosm. Really, they define what it is to be alive, and here are two of them actually touching. On this level, when you so much as touch another godbeing, a cosmic orgasm immediately begins. This is the energy level that we have the privilege and pleasure and fulfillment of learning to transmit. There is some measure of courage required, like plunging into a still lake on a cold October morning. But the resultant tingle will be beyond our dreams. Bring it on.

Letter from an ex-God

Hello. It's me again. You remember, your Almighty God who took early retirement awhile back. Call it a case of creative fatigue...when you create the Universe, after all, it can really make you tired! (That's a joke, as I didn't really create it, you know. God knows where it came from. No, strike that, he doesn't either.)

Anyway, I'm blogging to answer a few of your questions that arrived via a very determined young FedEx guy. It's touching to think that you remember me and highly encouraging that capitalism is still capable of free enterprise. So let's take the first question: Where am I? Okay, that's a very good question. The first thing you need to know that I am beyond the Universe. When I said I was hitting the road, I meant that I was leaving everything. How can I be beyond the Universe, you ask, when everywhere that is anywhere IS the Universe? The easiest way to explain this to you is to note first that this is a misconception: there are many universes (but I'm not in any of the others either). So what's left? Nowhere. That's it. I'm literally nowhere. If this answer doesn't satisfy, consider your own existence and your location in it. Where are you? (Don't give me a city, state, country, or planet—I'm talking about your absolute location, not with reference to any relative object.) Thus your location, whosoever you are, is 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0. (I give the eleven-dimensional vertex). That means that you, too, are nowhere. You just think you're somewhere. That's an illusion.

Okay, next question. Are you happy now even though you're not God anymore? Hmm. That was from a woman. Probably concerned about my emotional well-being. The answer is yes, but not even though, because. Think about it. You want to be Madonna? Michael Jackson? Or even Mick Jagger? I didn't think so. These people are as famous as I am, or was, and they've all had their challenges keeping their sanity with that degree of notoriety. To be honest, I'm happy hanging where I'm hanging and nobody can get to me, except, as it turns out, FedEx.

One more. Okay, I know some of you have been wondering this. Any chance I will come back? After all, the Who came back. Cream came back. Jesus came back...strike that, he didn't and for your information, he's not going to...The short answer is No. I'm not nostalgic for my divinity days. I'm cool without having to play that role. And you should be too. Be free! Be your own god!Be yourself! That's my inspirational message for today. Bye now!

Thumos

In his superb translation of Parmenides, Stanley Lombardo renders the first lines of the poem as follows:

The horses that take me to the ends of my mind
Were taking me now: the drivers had put me
on the road to the Goddess, the manifest Way
that leads the enlightened through every delusion.

The more literal Peter Kingsley in his wise and revelatory book Reality has it thus:

The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach rode on, once they had come and fetched me onto the legendary road of the divinity that carries the man who knows through the vast and dark unknown...

Lombardo admits that his is a radical translation. "Ends of my mind" instead of "longing" might seem a distortion of meaning. The Greek word usually translated as "longing" or "desire" is thumos. Lombardo explains that his version is meant to suggest "a unique inner experience, the encounter of one's mind with Being and the realization that they are the same." If translated as desire or longing, thumos would seem an activity of the lower mind rather than an insatiable drive for an ultimate encounter with the divine; it is essentially untranslatable.

I see this as a case where the literal translation is an essential gloss on the poetry. On thumos, Kingsley writes that it is "the energy of life itself. It's the raw presence in us that senses and feels; the massed power of our emotional being." So it is not merely desire in the materialist sense of wanting to possess or objectify. It is the fire of life that impels us to travel in consciousness.

It is easy to forget that it is the thumos in us that is running things. If it wants us to ride the wild horses to the end of the galaxy and plunge ourselves into the fiery heart of God, we will do so or die trying. And that is a good thing. The varied veils of human life are relentlessly being peeled away as we struggle, as a species, to climb out of our cradle endlessly rocking, and try so awkwardly to walk. Thumos will not let us sleep forever. It throws off the veil, takes us out of the mind, and takes us to the halls of the inner divinities whose have been waiting, silently, since time began for us to recognize them, so they may whisper to us one true thing at last.

It is time to study Parmenides and Empedocles and the other pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, because they represent the lost wellsprings of the Western tradition. Logic, analysis, and science proceeded from them. Yet what they were about had nothing to do with what we made of their gift. We have yet to plumb the true meaning of Parmenides' statement: "for to think and to be are one and the same."

A Sudoku moment

Sudoku is like a viral that obsesses people without their ever really knowing why. I think it is trying to create some new pathways for the mind. Sudoku is ideally to be solved through pattern recognition rather than through what-if experimentation. The mind is seeking to find more efficient ways to negotiate the modern data overload, and that is the true explanation for this phenomenon.

Bluejay exegesis

The Beatles' song Blue Jay Way (written by George Harrison) starts out describing a "fog upon L.A." in which the singer's friends have gotten lost. "We'll be over soon they said / Now they've lost their way instead." The hypnotic refrain "Please don't be long," repeated over and over, seems to be making a simple point: the singer wants to see his friends and hopes they arrive soon, "or I may be asleep."

However, there is more (much more) to it than this (naturally). Because there is an alternate meaning embedded in the chorus: "Please don't belong." What could this mean? That we, who are the friends George is actually addressing, should not "belong" to the mass consciousness, but break out and join him and his comrades who are sitting in the rarefied regions above the fog. George mentions that probably we asked directions from a policeman on the street: "There's so many there to meet." No, we will not find our way to Blue Jay Way by asking the officer how to get there. We have to follow George's directions, which he says he gave us: "I told them where to go." (Could he be referring to his song Within You Without You on "Sgt. Pepper," in which he talked of realizing how one was really very small in the whole flow of life inside and outside of oneself?)

There's also the possibility that the line means don't be long in the sense of length. Perhaps seeking extension of our lives, our egos, our identities, is counterproductive. Perhaps the longer we stay out stumbling through the fog, the longer we extend our quest and our self-definition, the farther we get from that consummation. And it increases the sense of longing in our lives. George says he will soon be asleep. That was in 1967. Now he really is asleep. And are we any closer to Blue Jay Way? In fact, aren't we a lot farther away then we were?

Still, from the clouds, comes the ghostly refrain: "Please don't be long." We won't, George, we promise. We'll go sit down and get really small, about the size of an atom, then crawl through into one of those higher dimensions which the physicists say are curled up very, very tiny inside our oversized reality.

Free to be fried

With all the talk of freedom justifying any and all wars and depredations against perceived enemies of the state both outside our borders and inside as well (the latter case encompassing just about everybody these days), it is perhaps redundant as well as obvious to point out that freedom is not just a good idea, it's the law. One is now "forced to be free" (an idea Jean Jacques Rousseau thought was desirable, and which helped spawn the French Revolution). The Iraqis know what this feels like, and Americans are learning.

But leaving aside the political ramifications of the term for a moment, let us consider freedom as the law of the universe, whether one feels oneself free from relative entanglements in one's personal life or not. When he made us, God blew a bunch of bubbles and let them float off and each of us live inside one of them. We wave and signal to each other as we float through our days. Sometimes we have the illusion that we are actually communicating with each other. Then we float onwards and upwards. That is true freedom. Not a very enticing prospect: rather lonely and desperate. And yet, that is the condition of human existence. Lest this sound tiresomely existentialist, mustily redolent of yellowing paperbacks by Camus and Beckett, be assured that I have no intention of invoking the French (though I had to quote Rousseau in the last paragraph—seems that even when you try to get away from the French, you end up repeating their ideas—as when they renamed French fries "freedom fries.")

Those who are fried as we ensure their freedom may take consolation in their new status as the most appetizing of crispy critters in the eye of God.

Anti-entropic timeflow

Although time may generally move in the direction of greater entropy, as the second law of thermodynamics dictates, surely there is the possibility of antientropic eddies within that flow, in which a system will exhibit a growth in energy, coherence, and orderliness. Living systems seem to have this characteristic, and even after they have ceased to grow in the ordinary sense, they can be seen to be "growing" in terms of regenerating themselves as long as they are alive. This is because living systems are never closed; they are constantly exchanging energy with other entities in the environment, so they don't run down like a clock that someone has wound up and then put away in a drawer.

Therefore, if it is possible to pedal uphill against entropy, even if only in the short term, and if one can take a breath of fresh air and enjoy a moment of clarity even in the awareness that the doomed universe is headed for final extinction and heat death in billions of years, then it is clear that the landscape of time is marked by many, many mountains, valleys, crevasses, and other irregularities. And since time is relative to the observer, as we know from Einstein's special theory of relativity, there are inherently multitudinous points of view about how fast and in which direction time is moving. For you, it may be going south. For me it may be moving north by northwest and I don't know a hawk from a handsaw.

In which case I might just be crazy enough to stay alive awhile longer.

The inner frog

I find Rennie Davis's use of the term entity very useful and find it cognate with John Lentz's use of the term godbeing. In both cases we're talking about a divine presence that has objective reality. It is not merely a voice in the head. In fact it might never say anything at all. It is an implacable essence, not part of human nature, but something more akin to a mineral bed—or perhaps an animal. We think of the native people's totem animals and how they buffer one from the terrors of the Absolute. It is a bit like that with the entity/godbeing. It is not like one's inner self or higher self, but more like one's inner dog or hawk or fox (or in my case, inner frog).

When I have something to say

There is something in the back of my mind that says I should blog. If I go a day or a week without blogging, that voice reprimands me, as if I have some sort of social responsibility to keep the blogwords coming. But that is obviously silly if I have nothing to say.

Then there is the idea that if I say something, anything at all, it is better than nothing, because then I have kept the "creative current" flowing. That is also a fallacy. If the creative current is not there, no mere exercise of the typing fingers will conjure it up.

I'll blog when I have something to say, ok? Or, to be more precise, when there is something to say.

Primal blog

This is the primal blog of the year, meaning not that it is like the blogging equivalent of a primal scream; that would involve using a lot of uncool capital letters. No, I mean primal in the sense of first. This is the first 2006 post of the qubikuity blog, and as such it is setting a tone for the rest of the year. Thus its primal quality can simply be characterized as an initial imprinting for what will follow.

If this is true, and this post contains the rest of the year in seed form, and as an archetype it is a pattern which will be recapitulated each and every time I blog qubikuitously in 2006, then in a sense you have already received the complete transmission, in its pure state, that is trying to be conveyed here. You've got it. When you return to read the next installment, the same viral will simply be reimplanted.

I am listening to Karen Matheson singing "The Dreaming Sea":

'Til I feel as though I'll never sleep again
When I close my eyes I feel the whole world spin
'Til I don't know where you end, where I begin

Don't say anything. Set aside your objections. Know this as the truth. How does it feel, how does it feel, to be engulfed in the dreaming sea, but now dreaming with open eyes? Then you could really say, I don't know where you end and I begin. And mean it.

So may this truth be a truth that lives in you this year, and in me. And then we'll see where we're at, and where we've been, at year's end, at world's end.

New year's resolutions

My first resolution is not to make any resolutions as I never keep them. In fact, making them is probably a sure way not to accomplish what I set out to resolve to do. If I inadvertently succeed in fulfilling them, it is out of blind luck and not because I actually had the will and energy to follow through on my own account.

However, in making this resolution I have already broken it, as I resolved not to make it in the first place. That proves the rationale for the resolution: that resolutions are inherently futile because they will invariably be broken.

My second resolution is to break any resolutions that I do make, on the theory that they will be broken anyway so why not just accede to the inevitable. If I have made a resolution not to resolve, I have already broken the first resolution not to resolve, but acted in accorance with the second, to break the resolutions I do make. However, by keeping the second I have broken both the first and the second: the first, by making another resolution, and the second, by not breaking it.

As you can see, it is a hopeless business.

Why America slept

They forgot they were free.

The wind swept across the open land where the birds wheeled across the clear sky and the men and women who settled and worked the farms stood proud and looked with fierce singleness of purpose into the naked single eye of the sun.

They looked with such power and purpose that they forgot to see.

And men in suits sat in offices and passed pieces of paper back and forth in the fading afternoon, and did not forget what they were about.

But the others forgot.

And so the land burned and seethed and started to rock.

You cannot fool the earth, the sacred earth, and it will never, never, forget.

Inside outside

inside outside
upside downside
oneside twoside
sheside heside

seeside hereside
whatside whyside
decide nowside
beside myside

Hidden meanings

There are hidden meanings everywhere you look. No nook or cranny of reality is exempt. Let's take just one example: Country Joe and the Fish. (I still listen to them because I still listen to a lot of Sixties music.) Well, it occurred to me the other day something that I had never thought of or heard before even after all these years, that the name of Country Joe and the Fish is an obvious Christ symbol. I mean, you've got the fish, which refer to Christ as everybody knows; and you've got Country Joe, whose initials are like "J.C." backwards. Ok, and you've got "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag," which is like Jesus knowing in advance that he was going to be crucified (and what was he wearing at that occasion but a rag?) —I could go on... "Sweet Martha Lorraine" was none other than the Martha who was one of the waitresses at the Last Supper. Two of the songs on the second side of the first album are "Love" and "Grace": tell me that's a bag that doesn't have "New Testament" written all over it. And check out these lyrics: "So I took out my harp and I played 'em a tune, I could see they were diggin' it, Then the one with the fez, well he turns and he sez,"We'd like to help you make your trip." Who wears a fez? Not people in the Middle East, surely (where Jesus lived!). And you have to go on a trip to get there, for sure! What kind of "harp" do you think was he playing? Maybe the kind they play in heaven, right? Anyway, you get the picture. Hidden meanings surround us, inform us, interpenetrate us. Go to them now, they call you, you can't refuse. Oh wait, that's Dylan. Well, there are hidden meanings in Bob "Buddha" Dylan too...but don't get me started!

C.J.=J.C.?

Whodunit

Ramana Maharshi says: "If one feels one is the doer, one must reap the consequences of his action. If one enquires 'who is the doer?', and enters the Heart, the doership idea will end."

I would add that thinking that you are the doer is just an unnecessarily complicated way of looking at things. Every perturbation in the cosmic manifold serves to rework and remold primary substance, which constitutes the Kosmic body of you. Godbeing energy is the quicksilver essence of your blood, tissues, and bones. The endless process of consciousness dancing through form is happening inside of you, all the time. So you aren't doing anything. If anything, you are being done.

Are you done yet?

Before long

what belongs
to me
longs
to be
so before long
leaves me
which leaves me
longing
for my former
belonging