I Me We: A Case Study

Being the bi-focal creatures we are, we naturally see the world from a two-point perspective, like telephone poles and railroad tracks receding towards a Focal Point on the horizon. This is the Geometric View of reality, boxing in a given area into a single, static unit, in effect digitizing phenomena for easy processing. Our bi-hemispherical brains are wired to view reality as going from our pupils towards a Focal Point, like this:

Whereas in the Organic View, waves of reality radiate in all directions, continuously blossoming out from a Nodal Point, like this:

And that’s the Organic View in a nutshell. A vision of an infinite number of radiating Nodal Points twisting and turning over Time and Space, creating second generation Nodal Points as they intersect.Webster’s Dictionary defines Organism as “any complete whole which by the integration, interaction and mutual dependence of its parts is comparable to a living being.” Well, think of the Universe as the Ultimate Organism, comparable to a living being, an act of continual creation, like a work of art perpetually in progress. One that is a continuously expanding organism, creating and recreating itself, spinning dynamically from every point, outward and inward.

Meanwhile, each Nodal Point has its own independent reality, its own trajectory through Time and Space, its own point of view. “The Universe revolves around me” is another way of saying that I am revolving through the Universe.

If the idea of an infinite number of rotating points radiating simultaneously sprains your brain, that’s because there’s only so much Infinity our humble minds can take. It’s hard for people to think inside-out, to imagine reality as being something generated rather than consumed. To be “in the moment” when the moment is constantly changing requires a oneness with creation where the Universe flows through you just as you flow through the Universe.

Consciousness is the name we give to processing information in order to navigate our way through an ever-changing landscape. It is not of itself, but rather it is the whole of our understanding, including our capacity to see, but also the amalgam of our senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, touch—of our desires—hunger, lust, greed—of our emotions—love, hate, joy, sadness, hope, fear—of our reason and our imagination—of our shape and our size and our gender and our species and our age and our era and our location and our status and our family and our memories, in countless layers in countless sequences.

The irony is that to the extent one does assemble all this information to form a distinct Consciousness specific to ones perceptions, one cuts oneself off from the Greater Consciousness to which we all belong. If we can discard this ego-trip of isolation from the Universe, and see ourselves as part of a larger picture, we too become infinite and timeless.

Because the truth is that it’s the same stuff radiating all over: the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, Alpha waves and Gamma waves, infrared and ultra violet. We are all products of rotating, spiraling, coiling, curling paths through which the Ether travels, powered by the cosmic force of the Big Bang, expanding the Universe point by point. Like the dynamic Universe to which I am linked, I too am becoming, not being. I don’t occupy space—I am Space; or rather, I am a sequence of rotating wavelengths flowing through Space in a double-helical pattern, intermingling with an infinite number of helical wavelengths passing through.

The Ether passes through me at the speed of light, spiraling around my DNA patterns, then continues merrily on its way. For a person isn’t a single static form, but rather a process, cells living and dying, becoming in turn a fertilized egg, an embryo, a fetus, a baby, a child, an adolescent, an adult, a parent, a grandparent, and a corpse that dissolves into dust, scattered to oblivion.One must respect the pattern, for it is the pattern that makes life possible. And yet we must be wary of falling too much in love with it, as T.S. Eliot warned:

The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,For the pattern is new in every moment

And every moment is a new and shockingValuation of all we have been.

Every new moment is a shock to the pattern—an infinitesimally tiny shock, to be sure, but a shock nevertheless—because the pattern must repeat itself under different conditions. Not just the obvious conditions of night and day, summer and winter, hot and cold, inhalation and exhalation, hunger and thirst, but of things like sunspots and traffic jams and different songs on the radio and everything that ever happened anywhere.

So of course the patterns are going to wear out after awhile, fray along the edges after the millionth-billionth replication. As one ages and energy wanes, the pattern fades into decrepitude and dissolution until it plays itself out.

Our influence can remain strong for quite awhile (there’s a cockroach that lived a hundred million years ago whose influence is felt to this day, in my apartment). But sooner or later, every pattern, every riff, every motif, every group gets swallowed up by eternity. Mass and Energy dissipate into Space and Time.As I said before, I’m, after all, not a scientist, so my organic explanations for these basic phenomena could be completely wrong. Or as Karl Popper once said about bad science—“It is not even wrong”—meaning that it can’t be disproved.

One day, perhaps, enough corroborating evidence, indirectly obtained, can be used to prove (or disprove) this hypothesis. I leave the glory of mathematical or experimental proof to others. (Rick Rodstrom)