69 The Depths of Heights, the Heights of Depths

3D render of Escher inspired stairs

“God said: Despite gravity, everything in the world is topsy-turvy. At this moment, as the world turns, your feet may be up and your head down, and you’re standing on your head. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because in Heaven terms, there is no space, there are no directions to be in. If I am all-embracing, and I AM, then so are you. There is nowhere to go to and nowhere you have not been. There is no way to describe the Indescribable, now, is there? What you do describe to the best of your ability is that which is imaginary and that which you steer by in the imaginary world. How do you describe Beauty? As best you can with words. You express the Inexpressible as best you can, yet all that is true cannot be described. It can only be known.  Where does that bring Us? Nowhere because there is Nowhere to go to and Nowhere to go away from. And there is No One to show anything to because Oneness is One, and One is not less but greater.Wholeness is more than halfness.”   http://www.heavenletters.org/all-that-cannot-be-described.html

“This world was over long ago. The thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of them and loved them for a little while. The miracle but shows the past is gone, and what has truly gone has no effects. Remembering a cause can but produce illusions of its presence, not effects.

… Remembering is as selective as perception, being its past tense. It is perception of the past as if it were occurring now, and still were there to see. Memory, like perception, is a skill made up by you to take the place of what God gave in your creation. And like all the things you made, it can be used to serve another purpose, and to be the means for something else. It can be used to heal and not to hurt, if you so wish it be.” ACIM 28:1

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   The Bridge to Reality

As we were saying in our previous blog (#68 Should we heal our sense of the future?), it is difficult if not impossible, in our perception of the reality of time, to let go of the past without releasing our sense of the future, which is just a projection of the past with a small hiatus or interlude called the present. In other terms, it is impossible to bridge time (as past and future without real present) with the Present which is the Eternal Instant. Then, it must also be difficult if not impossible, in our perception of the reality of space, to let go of our grasp of the ground — our physical-geographical location through birth and roots, the earthly genealogy of our bodily existence which is just another expression of gravity — without releasing our sense of the death of the body. The body is our spatial past. Death of the body, as a projection of its past, is thus our spatial future which we must release. The “present” of the body is also only an interlude or hiatus between its appearance and its disappearance. Moreover, the death of the body is only a physical reenactment of the sense of death of the split mind immediately following, virtually, the thought/dream of separation. In other terms, as it is impossible to bridge time with Eternity/Present, it is impossible to bridge space (as limited, defined forms or bodies) with Infinity (Unlimitedness). Infinity is the “spatial” expression or deployment of Eternity and Eternity is the “temporal” expression or deployment of Infinity. Vastness could combine Eternity and Infinity into a single word where Depths and Heights are mutually convertible.

We will never repeat enough with ACIM (A Course in Miracles) that the body exists only because the mind constantly connects with it as a means to experience and maintain separation as long and as repeatedly as the experience requires. The body was invented by the mind as a device to experience the re-creation of One/God/Love through its seeming opposite or contrast — a single opposite with the face of many: negation, the black pulse, I am not you —: ego, fear, lack, need, abandonment, attack, flight, sin, guilt, slavery, hate, anger (cf. CWG: Conversations with God). Applying this logic to time and space, we could say that time (= the mind’s thought of separation from the Present, thought of doing without and not sharing, thought of self-creation or self-made self-identified with the body) creates space (= the body as the expression of separation from Infinity through fragmentation, from Limitlessness to limitedness) which in turn creates time through the wheel of eternal change.

If there is no connection between Reality as Eternity, Infinity, and Changelessness and the relative world as time, space and constant change, that is, if there is no connection between an affirmation (yes, I AM < — > YOU) and a negation (no, I am not ≠ you), we must then represent to ourself this seeming bridge between Reality and the extent world (illusion) as a shift in focus and awareness, as a transition or a change in our perspective on what we call “reality”, from an infinite multi-sided regular polygonal view of the relative world to a whole, global, circular view of the One and Only Reality of the Spirit.

    The bridge is (in) the memory

The fundamental paradigm of time and space is essentially the following: space-time is the expression of the thought that we lack of something, that we are not WHOLE but fragmented, that we are not what we are supposed to be. We think we are needy. We don’t think we have all we need because we don’t think we already ARE all we need to be. Space-time coordinates are the framework, the canvas on which and with which we weave our scenarios of needs, desires, sufferings, and all the imaginable facets of the separation syndrome. If we knew what we are, what would we need space and time for? The idea of a Garden of Eden on Earth is the happy ending of this scenario of remembering by experience that time and space never really existed because separation never really happened but in a dream. It is a happy transition that takes place only in the MEMORY, not in the physical world, as long as the physical world resides entirely in the mind. Yet we can say that it is Heaven on Earth. It is metaphoric because the Real Paradise is the experiential rediscovery of I AM < — > YOU, that is, the Sonship (read the 5000 and more of Heavenletters at www.heavenletters.org). The Garden of Eden is a beautiful background for the rediscovery/remembrance through the experience of the Holy Instant, the Eternal Present.

    The relativity of space

We have chosen a drawing of M.C. Escher to illustrate how we construct a seeming bridge or transition between space and Infinity. It is the space counterpart of the time cat’s tail of the previous blog as a metaphor for bridging time with Eternity. The picture is a 3D render of Escher’s original drawing which I strongly suggest the reader to have a look at by following the link: http://www.mcescher.com/gallery/back-in-holland/relativity/.

This Escher’s drawing called Relativity aims at distorting our sense of 3-D linear representation of space with its 3 classical coordinates x, y, and z (3 intersecting lines perpendicular to each other). But, in the relative world, our linear 3-D representation of space is our main distorted space frame of reference. Escher’s relativity is a good spatial translation of Einstein’s concept of the relativity of time. We could go as far as saying that space is a distortion of or an interference with Infinity as time is a distortion of or an interference with Eternity/Present. Is not ego the source of this distortion, this interference or the distortion, the interference itself?

3-D linear binocular vision makes objects and bodies look real. They become EXAGGERATEDLY real by making us feel exaggeratedly SMALL (our basic sense of self-smallness through our idea of not being whole, of lacking of something). To observe, we need to reduce ourself metaphorically to the size of a pupil or of a photon. That is probably why we don’t see the GREATNESS of the Invisible and, consequently, our own greatness. We stick to the exaggerated details (judgments through measures) and are unable to see the Big Picture. That is the relativity of space and time.

Escher’s drawing is a good representation of the transition period we are traversing between the illusion of the visible and the reality of the invisible, the transition from our sense of separation to our innate sense of wholeness and oneness. This transition, imagined through Escher’s drawing, suggests lightness, freedom from gravity (in all its meanings). But it also suggests a sense or a period of confusion, of disorientation.

    The body as our spatial memory of the past

The perceived external universe as the embodiment of separation has disappeared almost the instant it appeared through the Big Bang. Nothing created by Oneness can be different nor differentiated from Oneness. Therefore, any perceived object as a singularity, which necessarily differentiates itself from another object, can perdure more than the time of Plank’s instant. The rest of its transitory instantaneous existence which appears to be continuous is only a constant replay of the record in the mind’s memory database. It is simply a reverberation or an echo of this object (including the whole universe) that appeared and disappeared in this infinitesimal instant. Moreover, since the object is always virtual, it doesn’t take any time (speed) nor any space (mass) in Infinity and Eternity. Speed must be an illusion as mass is. And finally, the Universe doesn’t have any real weight or any real age.

Plank’s instant revisited

Plank’s instant is Plank’s mathematical formulation of the subdivision of time into increasingly equal small partitions until it reaches a minimum of infinitesimal smallness. It is like the construction of a nearly perfect circle with the maximum of infinitesimal equal polygonal segments to approach this perfect circle. Both infinitesimal division of time and space are asymptotic to Eternity/Present and Infinity. Asymptotic means that they tend to zero (the perfect unity of the circle) but without ever reaching it. In that Plank’s instant, like the tick of a clock, quantum states change from one condition to another. Could we then define this instant as infinitely small or eternally perduring? It is both at the same time, but there is no reciprocal causality. The answer is always the same: a virtual void, a black frame or pulsation (the frequency of black) is created in the mind of the observer: the change of the perceived quantum states is a change that is not happening in the quantum particles themselves but in the mind that observes them. 

Two memories in one

The creation of a void or of a black phase (a linguistic negation or separation) is the essential mechanism that can cause memory to exist. Without a void or a negation, there is no need for any memory. It is totally useless. We don’t have to recall what we can’t forget (Oneness). We don’t have to recall an affirmation. Yes is eternally yes, like Truth, is eternally true. A no is simply the momentary absence of a yes.

Therefore, to make the existence of an external world look real, One needs to conceive for the mind a revolving door type of memory. One side of the memory forgets by negating and the other side remembers by affirming what it has never really forgotten. The essence of negation is to forget through the appearance of change (life and death). The essence of affirmation is to remember through changelessness, immutability. Therefore, the part of the memory that is used to forget is the memory of the past (the split memory), while the part of the memory that is used to remember is the Memory of the Present (the Whole Memory). Of course, the memory of the past is purely a virtual memory while the Memory of the Present is simply the Present itself! An illusion does not last long: a Plank’s instant or, more commonly said, a flash in the pan. But if illusion is a trick to forget, it contains in itself the memory of Oneness. So that we can never lose ourself in the objective world. Our GPS is our memory of the Present. It is always there, we can’t depart from it. It is built-in the Memory itself.

We can use Plank’s instant metaphor to express how Eternity and time, Infinity and space, wave and particle can seemingly cohabit only in the mind, not in the physical world. It can express how the infinitesimal subdivision of time and space (memory of the past, infinitely small fragments of space and time) can be reintegrated in the Memory of the Present (eternal duration of the Whole).

    There is no causality without objects…

Our very concept of causality is strictly related to the memory of the past.

If all atoms are basically and absolutely identical as the basic cells of the body are — the drop of water IS the Ocean as the Ocean Is the drop of water, the ray of Sun Is the Sun as the Sun Is the ray —, then their seeming differentiation can only be the product of a divergence or distortion or interference within the identity (Escher’s Relativity). Differentiation is only an effect of distortion in Oneness. By the same token, causality or the law of cause and effects can only apply to objects (illusions). How can identity cause itself? Causality implies the temporal and spatial interaction between two objects which produces an effect or result different from the two objects. One object is causing and the other object is caused to react to the cause by producing an effect.

If time and space are the mind’s and the body’s expressions of our sense of incompleteness, then what glues or holds all the infinitesimal fragments of our body together is the mind’s sense of fear and guilt resulting from separation and concealed in the memory of the past. It sounds perhaps weird, but how can a body affirms its reality, its difference (gravity) if not against Oneness which is perfect Sameness? We see then that it is not the body that affirms itself AGAINST Oneness, but the mind, the guilty, fearful, and restless mind. So basic fear in the guilty mind (ego) holds the body together through its constant reenactment of the Plank’s instant of separation (the forgetting or binary memory 0-1).

    … Therefore, there is no causality in Reality

Measures that are equal to judgments can exist only in the memory of the past since space and time happened only ONCE in the Plank’s instant. And this instant was over since a long time ago. What we perceive as the historical Now is only a playback of that infinitesimal instant. That is why we always seek to find the cause of everything to measure or judge the consequences or effects. But “the past is gone, and what has truly gone has no effects”, except in our mind. When we try to remember a cause, we are running after the illusion of the cause’s presence, yet there are no real effects.

In the Memory of the Present, the Cause is Its Own Effect so that no cause, but illusion can generate a past and its projection, its future. In Oneness, there are no causes and no effects because there are no objects, only Oneness. So we are basically INNOCENT because guilt, self-hatred, is only the effect of a cause called the “sin of separation” that could never happen in the Present

in Oneness is changeless, because Oneness Itself is changeless, then what holds Oneness together is not fear or guilt (that also tries to hold all its parts together) but wholeness, innocence, Self- love, unity where there is no past and no future, no parts, hence no cause and no effects: I AM < — > YOU. 

    A QUANTUM APPROACH TO NEUROLOGY

We are used to complex explanations of the functioning of the brain and all the nervous network of the body. Yet, scientific explanations are meant to understand and explain the functioning of the physical, but not to discover the PURPOSE of it which is non-physical, spiritual.

There is a fascinating key residing in our two-in-one memory when we add to its physiology its purpose. Think of the heart with its independent neuronal network as the seat of the Memory of the Present; think of the brain stem globally and of the medulla oblongata (rachidian bulb) particularly as the seat of the memory of the past; think of the neocortex as the link between the Memory of the Present (heart) and the memory of the past (brain stem). Think of the neocortex constantly playing the game in the Plank’s instant between the two memories. Now imagine the activity that is going on between this tripole. And go back to Escher’s drawing of Relativity… This is what the bridge of transition between the visible and the invisible might look like. It is as easy to cross as the bridge between conditional and unconditional love.