"So they're mostly the product of people? Have there been no revelations?"

"Very very few. And there's a good reason, the same reason as why we don't reveal the true state of things. It would take away the restrictive nature of material life. We've tried it before with some poor consequences. Plus there are no practical reasons to reveal. You wouldn't expect an education system which places each person inside a library and tells Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 54

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them to read everything and come out with the totality of human knowledge, would you?

Not only would it be impossible, it's just not needed. Similarly we don't need to reveal things that you've been put into the world specifically to forget, if only for a very specific purpose...Anyway to finish rather abruptly, now you know what the deal is for your current sojourn here, you should go. Come back if there are problems. As you can imagine I've all the time in the world."

I got up, smiled again nodding and left. Part of me was very uplifted. I always felt that the greatest strength of my life lied in my flaws and restrictions. Now I had confirmation from a good authority that this is exactly what my humanness is about. But I was also a bit troubled with the Designer. It was a bit arbitrary: it could have been me in that role or anyone else. I'm sure there was much dumbing down in the way It presented things to me but perhaps there were bigger problems with the world than an unskeptical person would imagine after hearing and seeing the same things. I knew I'd have to deal with that later, along with my other Burden to Come.

10. Philosophy of Pigmind

The idea that computer simulations could be the real thing ought to have seemed suspicious in the first place because the computer isn't confined to simulating mental operations, by any means. No one supposes that computer simulations of a five-alarm fire will burn the neighborhood down or that a computer simulation of a rainstorm will leave us all drenched. Why on earth would anyone suppose that a computer simulation of understanding actually understood anything?

John Searle

By the time I walked down the steps of the humble hall, Tanaka was waiting for me. I motioned for him not to speak for a while and we floated in silence away from the place of my audience. I dived back into my stream of consciousness. The main idea that puzzled me actually, was the way the Designer described consciousness. It was still a bit confusing: what the difference was between human consciousness and soul consciousness (and for that matter animal and mineral consciousness), as well as how the soul inhabits a body and the rest. Knowing that I'd be free soon as the Designer had promised (unless it was a liar) made it easier to prepare myself.

"Tell me about soul-stuff then. I already know how many of the physicists and cosmologists were (and are) wrong. But what about all those who have spoken of the mind? Because from what I've seen it looks like the real world has the old haunting of dualism about it --a ghost that is my Intelligence inhabiting a machine that's a body in the physical world."

"You're right, it is like that. Of course in this way the anti-dualists are wrong. But it's not that simple. Many of the things they said were right. I'd have to describe reality of what Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 55

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an Intelligence is as a mixture of the various 'schools'. For instance, although souls exist, there's no inexplicable mystical nature about them. They are Intelligences that are caused to be intelligent by being made to follow certain rules, like a human brain or a computer or the universe. It's just that those rules are much broader than the ones that govern a human brain in the same way that the senses of a human are restricted compared to those of an Intelligence. These are two sides of the same coin."

"So do you know the rules that govern a soul? I mean in terms of knowing exactly how this soul-consciousness works?"

"I most certainly do. And you'll be able to too, once you die and are freed of the restriction of the human mindset."

"Hmm...what is the restriction? The Designer said the purpose of a material life was to restrict the soul. Wait a minute! I guess the restriction isn't just being placed on a planet with less than perfect health and wealth. The restriction is also to do with restricting your thought patterns, your senses and thereby your self. Right?"

"Cassi, you've yet to be wrong in a major way in any of your musings . ?Yes, that's why your own self feels a bit different in your current state. Without any connexion to a body it will feel much more different still. But I know you're still bothered by all this soul stuff. I'm sure there are a myriad paradoxes you know about. Well they can all be solved because this whole universe happens to work! So out with it." For the first time, my inexplicable antipathy to my guide lessened. At least he knew who I was. And didn't find this 'who' objectionable.

"I guess I could bundle several of my questions into the one. See, if there are these Intelligences, how does the neural structure of a brain fit in? How do we inhabit a body AND control it? If the processing occurs in the brain what on earth is left for the Intelligence to do?"

"Right, right, slow down. I'll just-this is hard to explain while your mind is still embodied. Here's an analogy. When you're driving and you go under a pretty low tunnel, have you ever ducked?"

"Sure."

"Now if you ducked your head, are you likely to have been thinking that the top of the car might hit the tunnel or the top of you?"

"I guess the top of my self. What does that mean though?"

"Only the fact that in driving you've expanded your sense of self to embody the car."

"But I do this without thinking!"

"Exactly. The analogy shows how easy it is to transfer your focus of attention to an Other, even in the already-cramped existence of personhood."

"So this is what happens when an Intelligence inhabits a body? It just contracts its sense of self to coincide with a piece of machinery that's made of meat instead of metal?" He nodded. After a second though it sank in and I was still dissatisfied. Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 56

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"So who's thinking the thoughts? If the soul focuses its attention to a body then...if the body's thinking by itself and the soul only focuses on the thinking that's already happening --then there is something else that's conscious. The soul's merely fighting for control of a conscious host like a parasite! Or it's just a spectator. On the other hand if it's the soul that does the act of thinking then what need for the brain? Our Intelligences could restrict themselves and gain all the fucking potential they could possibly dream of by being embodied in a car, a rock, a leaf."

Tanaka shook slightly from a mild chuckle. "You're the first one to have amused me so. That's a great question."

"And the answer?"

"Human consciousness is only possible if it is embodied, if it's done through this complicated structure of a brain connected to a spinal chord and the rest. This is how the restriction on the soul is enforced. You can't just tell a soul to think only human thoughts if it's able to do more, because it's too hard to just do it. That would be like telling you to think only in atomic propositions each having one predicate and two arguments. You won't be able to just change. So the soul takes control of the body. This is just like the Intelligences that are responsible for gravity or other physical laws. When you're born, your Intelligence gets jurisdiction over all the biological and cognitive laws governing your body. In essence, you're shoved at the end of the world sculpture that's being created, at the particular point on space where you are in the womb. And so you begin. So the answer is a combination of your two possibilities. When you control a body, all you do is act out a program. You follow the rulebook of thought which says exactly what neurons can fire when, how to work out what the body is to do next and the rest. So you're thinking for it precisely by acting out the mechanism in the brain."

"If that's it then whence the?-"

"-that's not it. I've yet to relate to you the good part. In the process of acting out the mechanism of consciousness, an interesting side effect happens, which is in fact the point of the exercise and the only thing that's stopping it from being idle manipulation of limbs. You come to empathise with this rulebook. You get so used to acting out these thoughts, which are very simplistic from the perspective of what your Intelligence is capable of, that you become those thoughts. You then construct your self to be entirely in the material world. That's why in the first few months of a person's life, the soul becomes so accustomed to its new existence that it forgets that it's only a visitor. Or rather it gets so wrapped up in the task that it ceases to notice it's actually performing an activity."

"So babies can still sense that they're Intelligences acting out an algorithm?"

"Yes. And it's understandable. The rulebook of human thought has the feature that things start off very simply in babyhood and then they build up and interconnect in ways you might never have imagined. When an Intelligence has less on its plate it can still keep track of itself as being positioned at the top of the four-dimensional Sculpture. As things become more involved though, this realisation fades away."

"But how can you get so involved in doing a procedure that you become the procedure itself?"

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"Easy. You've experienced the same thing on another level. Remember long division at school?"

"Most unfortunately."

"It's just another example of an algorithm, just a very simple one with less than five steps. But remember yourself preparing for the test where you had to use it, a major test too!

Your maths teacher made you do lots and lots of examples until you became fluent with the rules and they became automatic. Do you remember another stage coming along?"

"Yes! Although I've successfully blocked it from my memory you've jogged it just as successfully. After everything was mechanical I began to develop an intuition for it. To feel out things about the problem. It seemed stupid to feel this about some five line maths problem but by the end I sensed the numbers and process as a whole. It wasn't like I was just mechanically following the steps (although of course that's what I was doing). The numbers were real, I felt them like I can feel parts of my body without thinking about it mechanically. I felt the numbers arranging themselves. I felt the gradual refinement of the answer until a quotient arose."

"Looks like you missed your calling as a pure mathematician...You can see though that by restricting yourself to a few simple operations that are a small proportion of all you can do, you can experience a new profound brilliance in them that you'd never have gotten if you used all of your abilities at once. Now multiply this feeling by millions and you'll understand what it's like. At first, the soul is just following the rules. You can see logically how the crying and babbling of this rotting flesh you're in charge of are the natural result of the impulses the brain receives but you're not yet involved in the procedure. When you start to remember your conscious expressions though is precisely the moment that it works out the inner profoundness of the crude patterns of human thought. And of the laughingly primitive senses too. Of course in its realisation, the soul is following its own computations, its own rulebook. But the human experience allows it to perceive some of its own thoughts in a new light."

We paused our conversation and then I realised we were walking along a path in the forest. How very metaphorical. Still, it was great to be a part of all these amazements. I visualised my human thoughts being a small part of the whole of my Intelligence, like a magnifying glass that can only work on part of an image but allows that small part to be seen on a whole new level. Then it occurred to me.

"Then material consciousness is like a patch! A fix to the inadequacies of this other spectacular consciousness that's supposed to be unfettered by the world. It's a fix to the angelic state of being that's seen to be so superior by many an owner of crystal shops around the world dressed in flowing light-blue robes"

"The Designer did tell you that he discovered the worldly solution only after the Intelligences became too unrestricted and thereby unfocussed. In essence, they were bums..."

We continued along the path that began to look like it was climbing the side of a mountain. At this point I remembered the singing of the planets and something felt comfortable. Unlike some of the things the Designer brought up, I really felt good about this consciousness system. I remember during life I often joked to Clara that I secretly Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 58

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hoped there was a God and an afterlife just to see the look on all arrogant atheists when they got there. Just like I hoped there was another reality, different to all the world's religions simply so that all arrogant theists could also obtain a look on their face that would be comical to observe. Turns out I was right in both respects, and both sides of these debates were right too. I hope I wasn't the arrogant character in my own travels in eternal life but the fact that I was curious spoke against it. In any case, the secular scientists and the mystics were both right and both wrong. The world was in reality an idiosyncratic but beautiful combination of the two, a kind of transcendental materialism. And I didn't feel bad for my years of contempt for the ad-hocness of some of those crystal shop owners with flowing robes that I'd met. In many of my musings I was wrong as were the best and worst minds of the millennia, but there was no shame in being wrong like that, not if the wrongness was for the right reasons. Still, there were a few loose ends that needed to be secured before I could truly sing the praises of the newly found world order.

"Firstly, how do other machines fit into this? If human consciousness is just a matter of following the rulebook, was artificial intelligence right? If someone builds a computer that follows the rules would it be conscious?"

"Frankly I'm surprised you'd ask this. As you already know, like every physical action in the world, the operations of the computer following this rulebook would need to be executed by some Intelligence. And just like when you shifted your focus to your body by simply following its peculiarities, the Intelligence that would happen to be assigned the role of sculpting the computer in space-time would inevitably take on this role and produce something that's essentially the same as human experience. It would calculate the electron flow of the circuits in the computer just like you calculate your own neural impulses. And just as you eventually came to embody a piece of meat as a natural consequence of your operations so this would occur in a computer. Minus the whole meat machine of course. The metal would then be embodied."

"And animals? And the objects we call inanimate? Have they consciousness too?"

"Well you've already met a few pieces of gas and rock that are conscious in Mars, Saturn and the rest. In practice though, very few nonorganic objects have enough complexity for a soul to embody them. The Intelligence that are in charge of moving tennis balls during a match don't empathise with the tennis balls nor do they come to think of themselves as the tennis balls in the same way as happens for humans. A tennis ball just doesn't have enough features: it has bounciness and gravity and spin factoring into its happy travels. But there's not much more. For an Intelligence to embody the tennis ball (in other words for it to be conscious), it needs to have factors that allow for learning, self-reflexion, examination of its own states; all things you may traditionally associate with humans. So most objects aren't like that. If you have too many restrictions the soul will not reach any new potential because it will simply be too cramped. It would be like asking you to pour your whole self into the process repeatedly adding one to a number for years on end. That wouldn't be a restriction that causes you to flourish, rather it would be atrophy. And many animals also don't lend themselves to the same level of soul-empathy because they have fewer mechanisms. Those in charge of worms don't become embodied but again as things become more complex the animals are embodied as a natural consequence and hence are Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 59

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conscious. And the souls operating them get the perks of having their selves restricted, also as a natural consequence. But perhaps you'd like to experience this directly?"

"How exactly? I mean if to become embodied in an animal I have to do all the mechanical work, I'd have to know all the relevant laws of nature which I most certainly don't. I assume they're out of bounds for my current state of mind."

"They are but you can still experience something."

Immediately we were back at the Sculpture, at the end that represented the latest state of the universe. I deliberately seeked out my home country and after a short perusal found the situation I so callously left behind. My own body was still lying in the snow not moving, but obviously I was alive. I then happened to find David walking in the chaos with a determined grim smile. From the fact that he was still less than a kilometre from me, about an hour must have passed since I was taken. There was Clara asleep and little Davey in his miniature place of abode. Just as I was about to stop myself from sentimentalising further anyway, Tanaka patted me on the shoulder and pointed to another part of the sculpture's surface. I spied another Intelligence floating beside the Sculpture busily working in her creative endeavour. As I realised it was a "her" my imagination immediately cloaked her in loosely clad and comfortable attire --I knew she was relaxed in performing her task with no affectation present. My elation at seeing another One besides my guide (and my creator obviously) was tempered when upon closer inspection I saw other Intelligences slowly appear in my mind's radar. There must have been hundreds of billions of them sitting on the sculpture's surface. They stretched all along it and I immediately got a sinking feeling. So this is what it was like to be completely overwhelmed! I realised that they were there all along --but the process of spotting one had made my senses aware of countless more. My imagination couldn't keep up. This means instead of imaging their individual characteristics such as appearance and clothes, they all appeared the same. What stays in my mind is the immensity I saw. There could easily be one soul for every living creature on earth, insects included, and there'd still be billions left for every imaginable law of nature or locality. Imagine being able to look at the head of a sewing needle and see the lattice of atoms like those pictures with an atomic microscope. Then extend thy gaze outward, oh gentle reader, to encompass the whole needle, then the hand that holds it, then the body (all the while keeping your attention on each individual atom) and then house, county, country and world. Now instead of each of those atoms, imagine an Intelligence that you can feel to be as elaborate as the most intricate of creations. This poor exposition of mine can serve as a taste of the sensory overload I got when seeing all these collaborators. Tanaka touched my shoulder and pointed to the original woman again as if to tell me to focus on her. When I did, because of the shift in my focus the rest faded into a much more transparent and manageable state.

"You'll have plenty of time to gaze when you're left to your own devices. For now, just go up to her and watch. She's a manipulator and her sphere of influence includes some creatures, furry and otherwise. There you'll be able to focus on. When you're done I'll tell you the last essentials and be on my way."

By then I'd already tiptoed halfway to the woman, who I realised was to be called Brianna in my projection of her. She half-turned and nodded. This was the other thing to Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 60

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get used to in the non-material plane. Although cause and effect held, communication seemed weird to someone like me who was still used to having to actually talk to people. Others seemed to just know things. I'm sure she knew more about my conversation with Tanaka than I did.

"Holding up ok sweetheart? Not letting him bother you too much?"

"Uh..no. He said you'd be able to-"

"Yeah, I'm responsible for several creatures. So you get to pick." I realised my initial vision of her wasn't judicious and she was altered to a woman in her late 50s with a croaky voice from smoking for many a decade.

"Pick. An animal to possess?" I blurted out for the sake of making some ironic voodoorelated remark. What kind of beast shall I shift the focus of my attention to though?

"That's right. Any time now."

"What about a dolphin?"

Brianna launched into a typical laugh for her age and condition whereby her deep voice started to erupt in spasms which had a degree of worldly cynicism mixed in and then escalated to a proper coughing fit. "Dolphins! Trust me you don't want that now. Not while you've still got that human consciousness happening."

"Why not?"

"That's right, I forgot that most people consider them cute or advanced. Nasty pieces of work they are. Violent too, against their own. Guess what species invented gang rape and domestic violence and organised crime before the first humans walked the earth? They also have an elaborate clan structure and spend much of their time in inter-clan warfare, exterminating civilian dolphins too, ripping out babes from already-terrorised wombs, tearing the elderly to shreds, you know fun activities. All the cutesy frolicking accounts for less than 10% of their day to day activity. According to my estimates of course." I was speechless, not knowing whether to be amused at her mannerisms or worried what other unpleasantness I might uncover.

"Wait, I have an idea that's just right for someone like you! A wild pig."

"Sure. What do you mean someone like me?"

"Just that we rarely get folks here who still have a connexion to the material world. What did you think I considered you some delicate flower that wouldn't be able to stand any situation?" Before I could respond, she pulled me in and stood me in front of her so I was gazing in exactly the same direction she was and stilled my head so I transferred all my empathetic abilities to a single point in the sculpture.

I knew I was a pig from Brianna's saying so but failing that I'd have no idea what I was at all. After all, pigs don't know they're pigs. This I can vouch for from my very very personal experience. I didn't even know how old or young I was or what gender. There was nothing to compare it to; I could feel my soft belly, my legs, my strong skeletal system around my back and some kind of genitalia but any further awareness of these eluded me. Pretty quickly, I even lost my awareness that I wasn't aware of what kind of Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 61

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pig I was. It took only a few minutes as a pig to forget all that and to exclusively sense the pigness.

To describe my time burrowing in the earth and running in the bushes as indescribable would be an understatement. It was a bit like my first experience of being disembodied when nothing existed in the outside world. This time, the disappearance was inside me. I saw things, poked things and ran on top of things. When I changed focus back to the Upper Plane, I'd remember these things and identify them as bushes, branches, sticks, rocks and so on. But within pigness they didn't have names, nothing did. There were no general categories. Everything was just there. After gaining my control over the pig for a few minutes (in reality Brianna controlled it but my focus on the process made the experiences my own too just like Tanaka had said) I stopped burrowing in the dirt and ran on the path. Life was good. I was less alarmed then when I died. Sure, I lost most of my concepts but it didn't feel unnatural. I also lost the concept of worry, which would also explain it. What I did possess was an endless craving for more. The berries I filled myself up with around the corner weren't enough. Nothing ever was. I could always use more food. And my pigness could have definitely used more sex because in my embodiment which lasted about half an hour, the pig didn't mate. I'm very glad --for experiencing that would have been just too uncomfortable. I still have the remnants of bigotry from my human mind. But I could sense the urge to eat and mate throughout my time there. These urges didn't make me suffer though, they just motivated me to continue my foraging. I moved around the forest feeling the leaves under my hooves and playfully seeking out various scraps (yes, I had an idea of playfulness, not as a concept obviously, but as something my royal pigness regularly partook in). Despite the craving there was no sense of urgency. In fact time as we know it wasn't. I had two encounters with other animals and I had no idea which preceded which chronologically. Both were with other pigs: the one with a wild piglet which bolted once it saw me and the other with a full-grown boar. I froze and casually lowered my centre of gravity. No need to explicitly think, it came naturally. The best way of describing our actions is that both I and the other boar were sussing out the situation. What would have been strange to me the human is that I had no malice. In a split second I'd decide whether to fight or run or to commune. But the possibility of an upcoming gladiator extravaganza didn't fill my pigbelly with butterflies. It was just something to be done. I wished no harm on the boar, I was just ready to do whatever's appropriate. In this particular case, we approached each other to start sniffing. Only when I remembered all this back in my own state did I realise how much I relied on smell. In fact thinking back, I have absolutely no clear visual memories but I can describe the scents quite well. I could tell from the heat emanating from the boar's skin that he'd been in the sun and from the smell of the patches of dirt on his hair (a moist earth but not too moist) that he'd been in an area nearby, an area I remembered to have a similar dirtsmell. Then, the encounter was over as neither of us had reason to stay. I remember making the decision (my only one in my pig experience) to go to the place where the boar came from, so I tottered off. Soon thereafter, Brianna patted me on the shoulder and my gaze wondered from the pig to the grass, the road, the clouds and eventually zoomed out back to me standing beside her. Just like being embodied in a person, I didn't forget that I wasn't really a pig but I stopped realising it, until the realisation came back just like that. Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 62

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There was absolutely no filthiness or greed to being a pig but no higher concepts either. I did get some sense of performing honest toil when I was the pig, an indescribable pride. There was something about the whole animal experience that stemmed from its lack of abstraction --it was benign. This was marked because the natural counterpart to this lack of abstraction was the concreteness of some people I remembered from college, but they were usually less benign. Still, I was glad not to have been made a dolphin gang rapist.

"Brianna, I realised something."

"Everybody always does."

"When I was being explained the reason for becoming embodied, I had a voice inside me. It was the voice of the problem of evil that asked how being born as a child who is to die before age one (certainly before one can extend their consciousness through living in the world) or a creature that would suffer greatly would extend anyone?"

"And now?"

"I'm still as angry about atrocities as I've ever been. But now that I've felt a tiny bit of what it's like to be embodied in a restrictive context, I've realised how valuable any experience within that context would be. Even if something very painful were to happen to me when I was the pig, I'd still consider it very worthwhile." Bidding Brianna goodbye, I returned to Tanaka, determined to make the most of our allegedly last session and see if there was anything else that's amazing about the world.

11. Revisionism

That is the law of the spirit for ever more. To grow according to the will of God! To grow out of these cracks and crannies, out of these shadows and darknesses, into greatness and the light! Greater," he said, speaking with slow deliberation, "greater, my Brothers! And then--still greater. To grow, and again--to grow. To grow at last into the fellowship and understanding of God. Growing.... Till the earth is no more than a footstool.... Till the spirit shall have driven fear into nothingness, and spread...." He swung his arm heavenward:--"There!"

The Food of the Gods

"Ask away."

"I already know a bit about the true history of the world. There's initial creation of Intelligences and then the subsequent sculpting of the material. But after that it's a blank. How did it all arise? To what extent have our ideas about our origins been correct? I mean I already guess that evolution didn't happen because, there's a Designer so-"

"Says who? It most certainly did. Just not exactly as imagined. What happened was, or rather what's still happening is-"

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"Wait, can we start chronologically and go through the whole history thus far? It would make more sense and we'd get through this more efficiently."

"In order? Well sure. Where to start?"

"How old is the universe?"

It satisfied him not to merely tell me the answer. He had to show me directly. Although I think he was mistaken with regards to my supposed calling as a mathematician I think he may have had a missed calling of his own: some pedantic science lecturer who makes his students do everything themselves to the dot and tittle, all out of an ideological opposition to spoon-feeding. Thus, he took me back to the Sculpture and said that it was up to me to come up with an estimate. Floating to the top, I sat for a while observing how time was added to the universe. I needed to see the speed at which the Sculpture was growing. Naturally I also checked up on David's lack of progress and my own piece of Cassielle fillet mignon cutlet in the freezer that was the Swedish countryside. As I watched the uneven but steady addition, I realised that I made a horrendous blunder. Like some corny line out of a movie I laughed at my silly self saying "you're not thinking fourth-dimensionally! ". Indeed what did it matter how fast the sculpture was growing? In my time here, two hours passed on earth. But what did this have to do with the age of the universe? If the Intelligences were to take a break, time would effectively stop until they went back to sculpting but this wouldn't change the age. What I required was a conversion ratio: what length of sculpture a certain time period (say a year) represented. I decided to pick a decade as my unit of measurement: years were too small. For this I had to find some event 10 years ago. My 14th birthday party would do nicely. It took a surprisingly short time to locate it, perhaps because I had no physical restrictions in scanning the sculpture and knew what I was looking for: Clara's outfit for my party that year was outrageous enough to be seen from all this immense distance of both spacetime... I then estimated the distance between that event and the top of the sculpture. Lucky for me I've left the material world and can just estimate the distance by sight rather than use some weird Minkowski space-time formula. My estimate was 10 million kilometres. It is of no use to try and explain how I could estimate such a large span. Nor is there a point in me explaining what exactly this constituted (was this sparse or spread out? was I surprised at how large the number was or how small?) because we run into the pesky problem of the extra dimension which shalt haunt Thee oh Reader 'till Thy demise. So let's just say I wasn't far off and a year in the universe was physically expressed in a million kilometre stretch. Trust me. I then returned to Tanaka where we could both observe the entire thing from a vantage point. After a much shorter delay I guessed the entire length was just over 18 billion kilometres.

"Wow, the world's only 18 thousand years old! If you're still pressing the whole evolution thing really did happen, I'd adore to see how you can explain the quick transition from pond scum to the Rolling Stones..." I cared not to explain to him if I was comparing or contrasting the two.

"I am still pressing. But you wanted chronology so let's. Yes there's a much shorter time frame involved. The first millennium or two was dedicated to some very quick transitions. From star dust to the planets; most of the physical world we finished sculpting in that timeframe. However there was no conscious life to complicate things Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 64

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and the processes we were dealing with had the structure of being extremely slow and gradual, so we could afford to squeeze them into a much tighter piece of spate-time. Kind of like you can compress a book consisting entirely of the letter q into a single line because there's little variation. Because of the added complexity of life, we've had to stretch out the same processes of star combustion and nuclear reactions by a factor of several million. So had the world not been sculpted but ran without design or reason it would have taken longer. In fact it would have taken the same length of time as the current human estimates because they assume uniform growth."

"Right," I exclaimed noticing one phrase of his stuck in my mind. Design or reason?!?

But I had time to mull over this later. "So was there a Big Bang?"

"No. As I said before, there was no Big Bang as there was no need to it. The Designer could create a Sculpture with some basic elements right there and then, so that's what happened. The earth was created first as a coherent structure. Then the sun and the other planets of the solar system, followed by the space junk and finally the several billions of stars as the background. Kinda makes sense because the earth was to be the origin of consciousness which was mostly the point of this material craze."

"Sounds an awful lot like Genesis."

"Will I make you feel better by pointing out some differences? Genesis has plants preceding the items of astronomical significance. And of course the evolution thing: the order of species is pretty close to modern biology and quite different to any creation account that doesn't mention evolution."

"Oh and there are stars light years away? I just thought since the earth was at the centre, this might be wrong too. Then again there is the 58 billion kilometre radius you told me of before."

"You answered your own question then. The stars are far away, but only up to 58 billion kilometres."

"But then what's the point? Why waste all the space? And the energy to move these through such tremendous arcs every night?"

"Don't worry we haven't run out of non-material oil and coal. Actually these are trivial with everything built in. Only a few Intelligences deal with the stars, not like the planets. Furthermore, this is space and energy that will be used. Did you think this earth business is the pinnacle? No my dear, the Designer has big plans for this world. This is merely the beginning of the beginning."

Naturally I felt goosebumps around my throat and back as I empathised with the utopian writers of the early 20th century. For a brief moment, I saw statues of human giants with flowing hair. Interestingly my vision of their appearance lacked racial overtones or Aryan propaganda. Who'd have thought the world of thought had changed since the early 20th century? Anyway, these gargantuan men and women reached up to the gas giants and dwarfs and they had that intense look of... I quickly stopped my irrelevant daydream.

"So we have earth, planets, stars. They come into motion. What next? Life?"

"That's right. I guess you'd want me to reveal the evolution part to you now. Well as you know the Designer isn't omniscient. When He figured out the Intelligences needed some Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 65

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physical embodiment and the rest, He didn't know exactly how this was to be done. There was a vague idea: from his own contemplations he knew the aims could be achieved by organic carbon-based structures of varying complexity which had certain other properties. But the specifics weren't to be theorised. They had to be tested. This was --is

--evolution. Natural selection was the Designer's own way of testing each step, making sure that each new feature does what it needs to. Only instead of random mutation we have the benefit of an immense Intelligence and several billion lesser ones deciding which mutations to produce. So the process took much less time than with random meaningless variations."

"The first life was bacteria I assume?"

"The simplest of the simple. So simple no traces had been left. This was already a breakthrough because it was like nothing else in complexity. Within a few hundred years the basic birds and mammals appeared. Another breakthrough because bacteria can't be embodied but these can, as you can testify by your excursion to the natural pig farm."

"True. And then the primates and humans I imagine. Just like I'd learnt but in a smaller timeframe and more directed right?"

"Pretty much. So we have the world being 18 thousand years of age. The solar system was in place by around the year 200. The outer stars by the year 1300. You were right, it took ages to set up but now it's clockwork. Bacteria by 1500, first birds by 2000. The period of mammals by 2400, higher primates two hundred years later and your favourite homo sapiens sapiens by 3000. Which leaves 15 thousand years of human history."

"As I said, the human race is 15 thousand years old. There has been no missing link between person and ape found because there isn't one. You know that each modification of evolution was planned and implemented. Well when the Designer got to the higher primates of the day, he knew that this was it. He finally had a piece of meat that performed all the basic functions that he needed for embodiment to be consummated. So he made a slight departure from the regular evolutionary trick of making a quick fix or a patch. He made quite a few changes and homo sapiens sapiens was excreted out the other end. This was only one of less than a dozen times where this tremendous jump happened, but it was surely the most important and seminal. With a fantastically increased brain, ability and tendency for upright movement and increased differentiation between four limbs into the two groups you've grown to personally know and love, the person was ready.

"It was a most smelly and ill-behaved group. If you imagine a gang as people acting on their animal instincts when they do something nasty. You can then conceive what it was like for such a gang when there was no civilisation to cultivate any non-animal part. There was one crucial thing though --a capacity for language. The brain could finally form abstract concepts and use a system which despite still being physically restricted and very simple was potentially infinite. This was the trick and it turns out the Designer was right in his good and bold works because by the first generation (where several thousand humans were present) there was some kind of sense of society and morals and justice that just spontaneously arose like some medieval scientists thought insects arise out of goo. And goo it was, of the most fallible and mortal kind. Life expectancy of a human was at first drastically lower than the great apes. More organisation and language Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 66

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and social structure at first meant simply more of a chance to kill others at a greater efficiency. However this goo produced most marvellous results. Eventually. I didn't press further about the details for the moment. There was absolutely no need. However I did muse about the reality of evolution. Turns out that instead of being the nail in the coffin of the idea of design, it was instead the most marvellous execution of design that anyone could have thought of. Even without a designer, I never saw the processes of life as purposeless. They may have not been congruent with my own purposes but so what? There can be such a thing as an inferred purpose, just like when we say "this hailstorm's out to get us". Evolution had many inferred purposes even if there was no central one. Now that I learnt about the central purpose, nothing changed except for an increase in the degree to which I appreciated all of its purposes, and all of our purposes as natural and beautiful extensions. My prior mistake, our prior mistake was taking local observations (that often had elements of mindlessness and cruelty within them) and then extrapolating to the whole. A perfect example of how wrong such an extrapolation can be is the other marvel I saw - the combination of mindless and purposeless processes into a purposeful mind. Of course if you infer to the whole then the whole process is mindless, useless, cruel and depressing. The reality was that it was extremely purposeful. In fact, this, this was what I'd give the Designer an award for. An intergalactic Nobel prize. Because it was a case of a flower blooming out of the dungheap. And then turning into a magical fairy-grove.

He snapped me out of my inner journey. "Unfortunately I lingered too long and must depart --plenty of new stranded Intelligences just like yours to welcome. The rest you can find out from me at a later stage I guess. Adieu."

And he turned around and quietly hobbled away with a slight limp. The path was long, stretching all the way to the horizon that I imagined and I watched his every step not wanting to tear myself away. There was of course the fact that I got to tolerate some of his grumpy intolerableness. My most pressing reason however was that I knew that I'd be free the instant he disappeared from my field of vision. This freedom meant making a visit I was unsure of. I dreaded it - there was a sinking feeling in my imagined stomach thinking of it. So I kept looking at Tanaka's departure, stretching it out in my mind until the dot was no longer a dot, all the while thinking about the fascination of the world's true nature and how it had an arbitrary aspect despite having more purpose than the Grand Narrative of the world I learnt about. Or perhaps it was because reality just gained purpose that it also gained arbitrariness.

After even the remnant of the dot was no more, I finally allowed myself to direct my attention to another part of the non-material plane but with a strange emptiness in me. Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 67

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Part Three: Exploring Me

12. The Humble Implorer

"Karamazov," cried Kolya, "can it be true what's taught us in religion, that we shall all rise again from the dead and shall live and see each other again, all, Ilusha too?"

"Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!" Alyosha answered, half laughing, half enthusiastic.

"Ah, how splendid it will be!" broke from Kolya.

The Brothers Karamazov

Before I set about my task, I drifted more freely into the world of other Intelligences. I went back to the Sculpture, by now knowing full well how to move about or transfer attention to pretty much anything. Relaxing my eyes I stared until the myriads of Intelligences appeared again. My random staring was of course to avoid being completely overwhelmed --I wanted to train myself to be aware of everyone and everything. I had to stop and restrict my focus on one or two Intelligences about 5 times because seeing them all became too much. The sixth time however had me moving my awareness from soul to soul while feeling relatively natural.

This time around there were even more souls than I perceived with Tanaka because after I got used to the ones that had connexions to the world, I opened my eyes to the others --ones that were unattached. Again it only took a few tries to be able to perceive all this without fear of the great light (or the great darkness, depending on your interpretation) searing me.

The grand array of Intelligences was even more bewildering than last time. There were trillions attached to the Sculpture. I could tell which ones were embodying humans. They were the most absorbed in the world, ones which I could not have spoken to if I tried (obviously people on earth aren't usually aware of their other realm of existence). Actually, some were a bit more open, about a quarter or a third of all the human souls. They must have been the ones who were asleep, I concluded, with sleep being a phenomenon that allows the Intelligence to transfer at least some of its attention to the nonmaterial plane. Unfortunately this meant that all the crap I've endured in the world about prophetic dreams and visions and the soul being returned to the body at night after meandering through a thousand realms were all true, if only in principle. Still, I comforted myself in the fact that people into astral projections don’t know what they are talking about. And communication between entities during dreams is far more intricate and nonmystical than they could have imagined.

My other element of surprise was how few human souls there truly were. The vast vast vast majority were not. They were enacting other aspects of the physical universe. As a result, most were not embodying anything (except for some animals but those, while being more numerous than the humans, were still a miniscule proportion of the rest). These could speak to each other as a result of not being embodied and I could speak to them, which I spent some time doing. I had perhaps seven or eight conversations that Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 68

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merely got me comfortable to the idea of other Intelligences but contributed nothing to my understanding of the structure of the world, or my own place in it or my current mysterious state of being. This was exactly my goal --I've had enough of detached learning. While I was still no closer to finding out who I really was in this Upper Plane, at least I knew I'd soon synthesise and form some new reactions to the peculiarities of the universe that I recently discovered. And these reactions would say a lot to me about me. There was one ironic thought I had looking at the humans as being an overwhelming minority. It reminded me of this incident in college. By then I was completely skeptical of any religious teachings. But because I hated anti-religious dogmatic bigotry as much as I did its reverse, I was still open to responding to some as interesting insights. One of those was that during an assignment about Buddhist art I wandered off the pragmatic research path to read some random teachings therein. The one that struck me was about the realms of existence. Although humans weren't placed at the top by any means they were truly the most blessed as only a human could achieve enlightenment but not a higher being. Furthermore, being born as a human was an amazingly fortuitous event. The Buddha compared it to a turtle swimming in a random place under the ocean. An ocean that also happens to have a wooden board floating somewhere with a hole in it the size of the turtle's head. Being born into a human existence is supposed to be as improbable as the turtle swimming up to the surface of the ocean to find its head coming exactly through the hole of the board that just happened to be there. Although I loathed much of the Buddha's other utterances there was something that rang true about that one. By being stuck in humanity I was part of a minority of living beings, a minority that could experience the indescribably agonising depths but also unparalleled peaks. These were part of the same package and even during the worst of times in my human life I felt it was a fortuitous package.

I was ready. It took only a short time to be able to locate Intelligences and I was immediately drawn to Greg's. I realised though that he was drawn to me at exactly the same time. Of course! I wasn't the only one who could locate others. Surely souls which had the full senses could all sense me to an even greater extent. He must have been aware of my visit here and my sessions with my male Beatrice and he knew when I was ready. It is here that my visual imagination became its sharpest: after all I've spent years looking at Greg as Greg, so it wasn't surprising that I could only see him in his worldly form here. We were at opposite ends of a rocky plateau staring at each other. The lump in my throat inflated to unmanageable proportions. I looked at him and looked and looked, not daring to take a step towards. He was also looking and smiling with an eerily beautiful and sublime expression. It was obvious that he was waiting for me to get used to this whole scenario in my own terms. Unexpectedly I didn't. This felt just so wrong, the whole situation. Crushing the cockroach of hesitation that appeared under my heel, I marched up to him and put up my palm for no embrace to occur. Instead, I took him by the hand and dragged his willing non-body into a room that conveniently appeared nearby. Like the room of my meeting with the Designer, it was surprisingly bare and inauspicious. Exactly what I needed. It could have been some tribal yurt or log cabin in the most austere north of Sweden. In fact there was only one chair in the room which was precisely the number I needed. Within an instant I placed Him in the chair and took a few steps away from it. There was literally nothing else in our shared space except a window Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 69

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staring out into a white openness that was decorated only by the horizon. Perhaps also a few cobwebs in a few corners. There was plenty of space for me to pace around though. Sitting in a chair that was dwarfed by the surrounding plainness, Greg appeared to me like some poor soul about to be interrogated by the Gestapo, or a pre-Soviet exiled dissident brooding in his Siberian hovel.

I began.

"Please don't speak. I'll speak and maybe you will afterwards but not now...I don't know what to say. But I have to --this all must come out. After I'm finished, I'll go to the Designer and demand to be put back into my rotting piece of flesh with no memory of this and even to be destroyed upon my death. Or failing that, to be destroyed here and now, and have no part in this nonmaterial world. This I realised in the first few seconds of seeing you here.

"I'm sorry for the poor manner I'm speaking to you in, and for this looking like an interrogation but this is what it must be. And you can’t respond as that would only make it worse. The reason I'm going to tell you my reason for leaving is because you have the right to know. In fact I want you to know because of how much I love you. This despite never wanting to see you again, or rather knowing I don’t have the courage to be in your presence. And I'm sorry if this is all unexpected but honesty shall be mine.

"Did you expect for me to run up to you? To embrace you? Perhaps hang off your neck sobbing 'Greggie, Greggie' all the while babbling about how much I missed you and of all the great things we'll do together now that we've been reunited? Well this is not the case. I did miss you. More than anything or anyone in the world. But I can’t see anything for us to do now that we've been reunited. It hurts me to feel this way but it’s true. You know I've had other people taken from me, both family and one other friend but it was nothing like losing you. You also know that I was only affected for a month before I “returned” to normal life but I've felt It follow me everywhere I went. You know I've seen everything since then through the lenses of us --what we could have experienced and what could nevermore materialise. Perhaps this was why I chose David --he was different enough from you to at least minimise the possibility of doing my own comparisons. Not that I would have wanted our relationship to extend beyond the soulfriendship we had. Still, the mere fact that you were gone meant every relationship I could conceive with a man - nay, with anyone at all - romantic or not, was seen through you because you weren't. You popped up everywhere: boys playing had your laugh and irreverent manner, my grandfather had your ability to do things the way he wanted and always come out unscathed because he was doing them for the right reasons. The last one was all the more interesting because it was a feature of him that I was aware of years before I met you, but your way of doing it took over. It became primary because you were not. I mean that you were not in existence, not that you weren't still of grand importance!

At this point I had to let out three or four sobs.

"There was one comforting thought though. This was that I would never see you again. I guess this would be strange to most people but I think you'll understand it at least now. This thought was the source of my greatest agony but it was ended up being my comfort. The mere idea that I was suffering because this is how things were supposed to be, that I was rightly devastated because my devastation was real --these things legitimised all my Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 70

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suffering and supported me. I had many a dream where you would reappear and I was dumbfounded and hurt all over again. There was of course the fear and anguish of reliving my loss. As well as the other fear and anguish that you'd be taken from me once more, and that my degree of nothingness would escalate to the point of impossibility. Those were normal, perhaps most would have such thoughts. But the most pressing, biting, gouging feeling was that it seemed not to make sense to have you again after all I'd been through. After all Clara and I had been through. It would have cheapened a great majority of things I've felt ever since you died. Standing here I know those feelings were true. And I feel horrible but I’m suffering much more now than when you died. All this because I adore thee so.

"As soon as I found myself in this realm of existence, my heart sank a bit as I realised that what were only brief and sketchy moments of anguish could potentially turn into an endless reality. At least back at home, in the world, I'd have those dreams very occasionally. I'd also wake up from those probably with some tears but I was fine because I wouldn't remember the worst parts of the dream and after all it was a dream and nothing more. I still had the fact that you were truly gone to make whatever pain I felt on this account real and meaningful. Here I realised that all of these luxuriousness could be gone. I didn't even inquire from Tanaka as to what happened to the Intelligences when they weren't embodied anymore because I didn't want to know the answer. If I had to face it, I'd do so on my terms. I now know just by looking at you that getting back your full superhuman range of senses hasn't changed you much. You're still you. Which is good because then you can hopefully understand all I'm saying.

"Still I had to face The Thing as soon as I was free, for to do otherwise would be true cowardice. But staring at you here and now made me realise that every apprehension I felt about this meeting were true. I had a sense of closure in my non-closure whereas this finality is the most insecure position of all to be in. I had meaning in my nihilism whereas with this Grand Plan that made everything worthwhile all meaning disappears and I don't want to be a part of this plan anymore.

Realising I was literally standing over him pointing a most accusing index finger I backed down and let some silence come.

"I'm sorry. I know your fault this isn't. Yet I can't help blame you even if just a little bit. Although I thank you for your letter, you’re not off the hook completely! Perhaps it comforts me to be mean and illogical here. All the while knowing you'd understand. Anyway I don't need to tell you what I find wrong with this whole Designer's Plan, the consciousness, the Intelligences, embodiment and the material world. You already know. And I've vented enough, I love you and I'm sorry to mar this meeting with so much hurt. I guess just like your death had this effect on me I'm having this similar effect on you. Perhaps last meetings just can't be devoid of this atmosphere, otherwise things would be even more pointlessly jolly. But now I can at least reciprocate. I can say, I'm very very grateful for your contribution to my life over the years both when you were there and afterwards as parts of you lived inside my head. You must surely have watched over me too. So I'm also grateful for the continued love you've provided. I must smile at the fact that you still exist for your sake (and because I think you have a most wondrous being or Intelligence or whatever you call it). In terms of how this relates to me though, I must forever be silent. I feel too close to you to pretend otherwise. So...adieu dear soul." Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 71

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Although I sort of knew he'd understand, another part of me feared that he wouldn't, that he would try talk me out of it, telling me I don't know the whole story and that there's so much more to experience that would make me take back my words immediately; or (far worse!) that he would be very hurt and that this would damage his existence in the nonmaterial. This would have made me feel even worse. None of these things happened though. Instead, he slowly got up and walked towards me, still respecting my original request by not uttering a word. He knew silence was the best way he could show his support. The atmosphere was the exact opposite to the one I experienced when watching Tanaka depart. As Tanaka's figure slowly shrunk I sensed negativity slowly coming toward. Here, as Greg's figure approached, I felt negativity dissolve as I finished my burden and could be extinguished in peace (if there was no way to go back to the blizzard). Still, he surprised me by ending his walk right opposite me. Instead of uttering a word like I almost expected (or hoped for?) he kissed me on the forehead. This, this was the most searing experience I had in the Upper Plane, making the music of the planets crumble to nothing in comparison. The kiss had so much love and understanding and acceptance compressed into it that I was numbed at the fact that he had understood all I said (and more importantly all I didn't!) and still poured forth goodness not rejecting me. Lasting who knows how long his kiss ended and he opened the door and was gone, leaving me in the bare shack with only the glow I sensed.

13. Love, Crime and Scattered Irony

Walking out of the shack I realised that I still needed some time in this world. Of course, I was still up for demanding re-embodiment with amnesia or annihilation. But there were things that I actually wanted to get done first. For instance I still wanted to find out about the true nature of evil in the universe. How was it mandated? What was the true origin?

And I needed to see the consequences.

I scanned the infinite array of Intelligences and randomly directed myself to a few. These I spoke with and they directed me to others and so forth. By the end of my mingling I knew where to go.

The goal was to see some souls that had committed supposed wrongs while embodied. There was a kind of fascination with being face to face with evil (if in fact there was evil), much like a classic interview with Charles Manson. Also this was essential in me forming a final opinion about this world. I've seen the beauteousness of the four dimensions, the musical harmonies and the intricacy of embodiment. It was time to see the dark side. I chose two souls with very different pasts. One was of a woman who had poisoned two husbands over the course of a decade. Clearly she was a manifestation of the Fallen Woman archetype, with Adultery and Licentiousness thrown in. All in all an interesting exploration into archetypes. The other was of a man who butchered his wife and three children while in a rage. Again an archetype, this time of the Horrid Brute. And Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 72

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both were necessary, for only between them did they have premeditation and sudden anger, as well as the obvious gender stereotypes.

The woman, Tina, appeared pretty much like a traditional Black Widow with an impeccable dress and lips that combined beauty and cruelty. She sat in a plush chair and looked at me with a smile that hid nothing. For a second I swear I saw her casually twirling a ribbon in one hand and her exposed shoulder housing a curly tattoo of an "A". Until that is I realised that this was my archetypal imagination going wrong. Of course all of my senses stemmed from my imagination parsing and interpreting some non-material events but this was rather more blatant. The man was Fernando (ironically, the same name as that of my father's illustrious ancestor who flew into a rage before Columbus). I knew that the name was part of the archetype of the fiery jealous Spaniard. He sat in another chair next to Tina looking slightly sheepish with some sweat on the hair above his forehead that he'd constantly brush away from before his eyes. Good. This was exactly what I needed. I could have picked some more interesting cases. But I needed to look at some sexist and racist stereotypes, because then it may just be easier for me to navigate the minefield. That and these incidents actually happened so my companions weren’t exactly unblemished.

"Well ask away," Fernando began. "We know that you invited us here to hear us talk of our...misdeeds. What would you like to know?"

"OK, how was your childhood?"

"If you're implying it was because of my childhood, then no. I wasn't abused. Perhaps a bit neglected. I mean my parents were working long hours and I was home alone. As were all the kids in neighbourhood."

"And you interacted with them?"

"Huh? We played." That response got me off my high-horse quite nicely.

"I know this sounds silly but I'm still interested. Did you --did you ever hurt small animals or torture them as a child?"

"I stepped on a few cockroaches."

"I did" Tina exclaimed out of nowhere her eyes darting toward us. "Unlike Fernando, I was from an affluent family. My mother could afford to stay home and be a mother. I guess I was spoilt but only a little. I was used to getting my way, that's for sure. What happened was that our dog had puppies and they were all fine except this one who kept crying and howling and whimpering. It drove me absolutely crazy. I must have been about 6. On the third night I could take it no more and went to it, picking it up and squeezing. I told it to be quiet in a firm voice. Unfortunately for it, it didn't understand. I squeezed a bit more. Nothing. By then I was gripping it tighter and tighter and it went quiet. I only wanted it to be quiet. But at the same time, I was at an age where I knew that squeezing it would kill it. I mean as I was doing it, it registered somewhere in the back of my mind. I guess I pushed it away because my main concern was for it to be quiet. Which brings us back to me wanting to get everything my way."

Stunned by this spontaneous confession I nodded in her direction and continued speaking to Fernando. "So your childhood was less than idyllic but normal. Then what?" Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 73

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"Pretty simple. It's not four dimensional sculpting, or should I say it's not rocket science, for the benefit of your earthly senses," he said winking. "I was pretty unsuccessful at school and left quite early. Apprenticeship. Then a job as a cobbler. I was in a small town that still had cobblers, I forgot to say. Anyway I fell in love with a girl and married her and had children and all that boring usualness." I shook my head vigorously at this, ashamed of and trying to smooth over my initial condescension. "Then I began to lose customers as the small town got smaller and money was a struggle."

"Nothing serious?"

"You're looking for an explanation for what you know I did. Sorry but I can't provide you with a definite one. I did not turn to gambling or alcohol or prostitutes. Just became worried that's all. Then during this worry period my dear wife got into a bit of an argument with me and started hurling ridiculous exaggerations about what state I've been in lately. No more ridiculous than the things I said to her I guess. But something happened and I lost it. The mysteries of the human mind rulebook. I don't remember it clearly but I stabbed her and the kids. And then slit their throats. Don't ask me if it was all a blur, everyone asks me. It was. I came to and realised what happened and for the next five minutes I wailed so loud the neighbourhood was outside my window. I tiptoed around the options of turning myself in or doing everyone a favour with the same knife. Fairly quickly I decided to face up to what happened and you can cut to me sitting in the police station in your mind. Biggest thing that happened in town in years." I was shocked at how little I was shocked. It was partly the desensitisation of having lived in a material world that is so often brutal. But there was more, being in this plane changed things. I could see parts of the Sculpture reflecting what he had said and it seemed so...natural. Like it happened without an explanation.

"What about me? I can also tell!" said Tina.

"Very well, what indeed about you?"

"I grew up to be fairly successful in business. I married young and soon felt trapped. He didn't exactly turn out to be what I imagined at first when I was high on the hormones of infatuation." I smirked imperceptibly to myself. But I wasn't bitter. Not anymore anyway.

"So I researched some poisons because I slowly blossomed to hate him and so didn't just want out of the marriage. Still I deliberately picked something where he wouldn't suffer. Too much. Then a few years later the same thing happened. You wonder why I didn't learn?"

"Actually no I don't. Nobody does. All the time I mean. Plus I'm sure husband number two wasn't exactly a clone of husband number one."

"Very true."

"So what happened to you both?"

"In the Sculpture or here?" asked Fernando.

"All of the above."

It was Tina who began. "After the second murder the detectives finally got onto me and noticed a pattern. I did quite a good job covering my tracks, it wasn't something crude Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 74

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like hemlock. But I did make mistakes and they eventually got me. They made a case, it was a big uproar. The Adulteress Poisons Again. I think that was an example of an actual headline. That I did not remain faithful to the husbands I despised clearly went against me despite this being the late 20th century. I was convicted, which was fair enough because I did it and the police managed to gather some pretty convincing evidence. The rest is history. I was incarcerated for 25 years serving the two sentences concurrently. Then came parole due to the fact that I was an angel in prison, and did my PhD and taught inmates in all the educational programs. I got a new lease on life and eventually found myself an amazing third husband who I remained in blissful communion with until my death. I managed to disguise my past from him quite well too, it was my only case of deceit since prison."

"Well it's a fairly major one at that!"

"True. But what else was I to do? And here...here I'm ok. There aren't any problems. I had sociopathic tendencies from childhood. These were directly caused by my family situation and by the structure of my brain. So here I'm not viewed as being at fault because I was merely following the physical structure and impulses of my brain. Embodiment is often a chance to learn despite being restricted by a certain degree of determinism. And learn I did."

"You mean just like I can learn from watching a character in a movie despite having no control over her or him?"

"Perhaps. So this was my life. And I did learn from my comeback into society, and the fact that I overcame some pretty horrible deeds of my past."

"And you Fernando?"

He smirked and stopped caring about his sweaty hair. "The opposite. A larger than life attorney came from the big city to defend me. I wasn't morally culpable. I had a dissociative episode. I couldn't remember. Nothing in my physical life could be pinpointed as a cause. This was all true. These facts saved me there because I was acquitted and went on to live for another decade before dying of a drug overdose caused by my constant self-injecting to attempt to do some dissociation of my own about what I did. But these facts buried me here. If nothing physical contributed to my anger then it wasn't my mechanical following of the rulebook. It was me. My Intelligence. Or so it must have been. Where else could the evil have come from? Sure I had some factors from my past but they were hardly conducive to slitting the throats of loved ones. I remember only the start of the incident and it was like I don't know where it came from. So now other souls tend to avoid me. Who wants to commune with an Evil one?"

"Is that your only punishment?"

"That and the torment that it must have really been me that was evil not the circumstances. Where, where else could it have come from? I ask myself this constantly."

"...unlike Tina who is lauded."

We talked for a bit more and I left the pair. Neither of them creeped me out or seemed disgusting or anything like that. But here again the explanation made me feel like it was all for nothing. I guess it made sense. The purpose of evil according to the Designer is to Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 75

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challenge the world, to compress consciousness into an even tighter space so that the gunpowder explosion is even stronger. And this evil must operate by (and be caused by) mechanical rules, just like everything else in the Sculpture. Something that wasn't caused by these rules must be the Intelligence getting carried away. But so what? I guess in our world we may do the opposite. We generally consider premeditation to be worse. The nonmaterial reality makes sense and it's not worse or more arbitrary than our one --but it's not better either. By the Designer's method, morality is all a game, material life being an opportunity. And it wasn’t much different to the shaman’s ordeal described by my husband, at least in degree of arbitrariness. Thanks to the nonmaterial game, there was no overwhelming tragedy in either Tina's or Fernando's crimes because it was all part of the

'act' that boosted some consciousness somewhere to a higher level. And while I could understand this perfectly it still seemed empty. I guess this was something the nonomniscient Designer was still working on. There was only one antidote to this emptiness. I had to visit some material of substance. I had thought of seeing Clara for quite a while during my stay here. Each time I had the thought, there was always the added sense of revulsion at spying on her most-inner sanctum. That's why I was so enthralled at focusing on the embodiment of a pig but was less eager with a human being. Especially one I was so close to. It seemed more sane, more respectful to visit a stranger. Walking a mile in a stranger's shoes, I’d have no preconceptions and they would probably feel less exposed had they known --because there’d be no expectations. But with someone I was so familiar with, it was different. Part of me felt like I was checking up on her. Like I was suspicious about the extent to which all we had experienced together was authentic; and suspicious about how her inner and outer experiences away from me differed. But it was a convenient lie, for of course I had no suspicions. I had nothing but joyful anticipation.

I changed my mind when I put myself in her place. If it had been her who had the opportunity, I would have gladly offered my being for her full inspection. I knew I had absolutely nothing to hide from her. Any negative thing that would have come out as a result of Clara thus inspecting me would only have been more readily resolved because of the inspection. I knew this because I knew who we were, and that nothing would have changed who we were to each other. Clara would also have found so much that was positive in me, things I could never express. Or wouldn’t have the strength to. It was then that I realized it was a welcome thing for me to do it to her. Plus it was completely in line with what she said to me on That Day. This was my one true chance to show that I love her not blindly but exactly for who she is. I was kicking unconditionalism in its seemingly seductive yet ultimately troublesome buttocks.

I shifted my attention to Her sleeping in her house that I left but a few material hours ago when she first met, and uncovered, my husband. Of course in my sweeping glance I also observed David almost reaching the settlement. He had perhaps a few hundred metres to go. It was all happening! Once I eyed the sleeping one though, my other thoughts were obscured. I guess because she was sleeping her hold on the material was more tenuous, meaning I could have appeared to her Intelligence directly and communicated on a conscious level. This I didn't want to do. Not now. Especially not if there was a good chance my body may die --such an appearance would have been in poor taste and contrary to what I knew of her.

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Instead I focussed on her body. There was of course little David sleeping in a tiny bed on the room next door. She had troubles with him before but the transition away from the terrible twos into the slightly more manageable threes made this nocturnal split possible. So she had solitude. Her head was slumped in a downward direction, slightly hanging off a relaxed neck. Her toes wiggled. And of course her body appeared so very unravaged by time and life. Several years since her pregnancy she had retained all the innocence she had then. And gained some too. But her breathing wasn't naive. I found it very worldly. It's just that being worldly and aware of every aspect of existence is generally viewed as something almost in opposition to innocence. All my life I knew that was bullshit but now I had firsthand support for my intuition (like all the other things I've obtained firsthand evidence for in this plane). Clara had experienced so many things in life --of much greater scope and unbridledness than me --but she was unstained. Her lips were so very different to Tina's. I mean there's the obvious difference in that Clara hadn't yet acquired a husband, let alone poisoned two. But in a way she had done things that this plane may have found more shocking than Tina's “physically determined” murders. The point wasn't the act: Tina's act was of course cruel but it was exaggerated in her society by remnants of a Victorian mentality. Clara had also done some cruel things (of course in my eyes they could never compare to Tina) but her lips did not show this, nor did they reflect Tina's haughtiness.

I realised I was now going beyond the physical. I also felt myself gasp. All my original reasons for seeing her melted away as the reality was completely overpowering. I was taken away from my currently-jaded state of being and drowned in a tornado of epiphanies. All of my thoughts about how great she'd turn out to "really" be were confirmed a thousandfold, and then shattered due to being too puny. The real her was just that much greater. Perhaps if I had inspected other people they’d also be as great. But all I cared about for the moment was that she was. There absolutely nothing to hide and nothing to be hidden. And I didn't breathe a sigh of relief because I knew I was never really suspicious. I already had an intuition about each wondrous thing back in the real world; seeing these things was just confirmation.

Disclosing much more of what I saw there would be impossible. Not only is it incredibly hard to verbalise but it really would be breaking her trust. Not that I think she'd mind, I think there's nothing I could possibly say that she would be ashamed of --even the bad (especially the bad) was still part of the totality of her. It's just that if I disclosed more, I'd feel like I was breaking her trust even if she wouldn't. All I can say was that Clara was so full of love that it was almost scary, but it wasn't of the soppy or creepy or heavy kind. There was a tremendous sense of playfulness mixed in, an irreverence that was more fitting to her good nature than any reverence would be.

To love without losing one's sense of irony. Sound's better as a purpose than what I've seen here.

Of course there was the pesky question about determinism that was raised with my criminals. Do I only love her for who she happened to have turned out to be? By determinism or coincidence? Unlike a similar question in this nonmaterial plane, out there it didn't bother me at all. Out there, there was no purpose, no grand plan. She did not have any specific role to fulfill so the lack of explanation for the nature of what it means to be human wasn't as much of an issue as here, where there was an explanation. Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 77

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There is one last thing I must share, because it was essential. As soon as I realised this glory of materialism (or at least materialism in the vicinity of this one particular person) and made sense of her, something happened. I noticed that I wasn't seeing her body anymore, nor had I been for the last moments of my contemplation. After all, all of my visions were constructed. But I switched to constructing her not out of limbs and meat and bone but she became just a blob of essence. A bit like the Designer but much better, much more palatable for me. I could feel how her body would have looked like. But just like when I had to change my imaging of Brianna to have a smoker's cough, I now had to imagine Clara as just a blob of love with bits of irony scattered here, here and here.

14. A Short Excursion into the Obvious

Once more, my awareness was only that I had awareness. There was nothing else. My parsing of the nonmaterial had faded. I had retreated into my original post-death state voluntarily, largely because I had to ponder. First though, I had to leave some of the shackles of the nonmaterial world.

This time around I enjoyed the nothingness a lot more. I guess knowing that you know where you are helps, as does the ability to bring awareness back, to awake again. I was truly relaxed. I had never been in a sensory deprivation tank or anything like that during my material existence. My usual downward gaze upon all things spiritualist didn't extend to this though, I merely felt a bit apprehensive about the whole exercise, like it would send me crazy. Here, I wasn't crazy. Perhaps it would help to describe one difference I realised then. Whenever I tried to calm my mind on earth there were a trillion thoughts popping into my brain and the more I tried to calm it the more it was unleashed to a greater and greater extravagance. Because I wasn't used to consciously constructing reality as much on earth, when my bedroom lights went out while I was a kid, this conscious construction would come back with vengeance. 'So you've kept me at bay during the light!' it would whisper to me, 'the darkness shall be my canvas to operate'. Which it did, often leaving me with an hour of sleep and bags under the eyes at school the next day. Here though every second of my existence was conscious construction. I took the sensory perceptions that extended outside the narrow realm of senses I was used to and then mapped them to ones I was more familiar with. Hence the sights sounds smells and pangs of the good and poor variety. Naturally the little demon or homunculus in my head that previously used to be able to overwhelm me at a moment's notice was less vigorous. In fact I had only to stop deliberately constructing this nonmaterial reality to end up in this state.

It was refreshing, an icy bath without the numbness or pneumonia. The relaxation was immense: like stretching out each and every one of your muscles and tendons to the point where the knots disappear and then further and further until they melt away completely. It was also the time I was most completely alone with myself. One thing I have always disliked is people who constantly need stimulation from the external world. Not that I’m some anti-extrovert, not at all. But I feel that if you’re uncomfortable when left only with Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 78

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your own thoughts, it doesn’t say much about them. In fact it suggests that you find yourself rather unpleasant, and that’s never good. I wasn't exactly lost in myself but I felt that I needed no external world at all for the time being. In this state I could finally take a step back and decide.

There was no doubt that there was much that was beautiful about this creation, this world. For starters it actually wasn't as repugnant and counterintuitive as most non-materialistic accounts of the greater universe. The Designer was not a vicious egotistical being that punished arbitrarily and for the most trivial of infractions. I mean trivial in terms of how the human comes to know them. I didn't even feel the problem of evil here as much as the diehard atheists would have me feel. There was no urge to call the Designer a bad parent, guilty of child abuse, or yell out and curse all the wrongs that have happened. There was even a purpose to the whole thing that wasn't laughable or cruel. And yet --it wasn't as good as the good old nihilism I was privileged to be a part of. At least there, there was some sense of finality to it all. It wasn't a game or a plan and that meant more than the most meaningful of games or plans. I guess I was an anti-eschatologist: I was uncomfortable with the mere idea of a final purpose, of a climax to this endless universal story.

It was then that I knew that annihilation would have been most cowardly. I had no business being defeated by the meaning of this world if I still had the potential to have my own. For once, I truly understood one thing the Designer had told me: the Intelligences were jealous of human existence. Or at least they should have been. Most I've met (and there were plenty of encounters that were immaterial to my account so I didn't speak of them) didn't seem to mind being here at all. All the worse for them. Having experienced the smallest part of angelhood I knew I wanted to come back down to earth. The Designer was right, only a human existence provided the necessary restrictions. But I, Cassielle, added another qualification to that while I floated in nothingness. Only a human existence could provide one with the meaninglessness to become something. At least when tempered on the current naturalistic scientific climate prevalent in the material world. I truly was luckiest of the lucky. Before I could act on this obvious revelation I felt I needed to have another obvious revelation: testing and confirming my suspicions about my husband. Like my journey into Clara, I sort of knew what to expect out of this journey. Nevertheless I needed to see for myself.

This time my sensory perception lasted but a split second. I didn't even need to visualise the Sculpture, my focus went straight to David by then already walking into the settlement having reached it in the most adverse of conditions. It then immediately saw both much and little by scanning his worldline back in time for several decades, not noticing everything but seeing the overall locus of body and mind and of course perceiving scattered incidents. Realising that there was more to be explored my focus then darted away from the material to the actual Intelligence that was implementing David. Seeing more and deciding that no more needed to be seen, my inner gaze returned. Despite my foreboding, or because of it, I did shudder. A part of me wanted it to be false, wanted him to be the true love of my life. However this was clearly not the case, and there was no shame in stating this to anyone. Including him if I ever got the chance. It Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 79

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was quite simple. It wasn't that he didn't love me. He did. There was definite sincerity in that just like in my feelings for him. The blunt truth was just that his affection was completely unsuitable. And yes I was mistaken in the various stages of our relationship right up until the last few months. There was some indescribable degree of falsehood in it all. Not that he ever explicitly deceived me, it was much more scattered and covert than that. Like Clara's conditional affection thing, I had my own hangups about human relationships. My soapbox was manipulation. I did not loathe it entirely as a behaviour. In fact I expected some from everyone, and a special kind of manipulation from those close to me. I myself will not shy away from manipulation; in a certain context it truly is more appropriate to a relationship between any two people who are close than the detached granting of complete autonomy. So it wasn't that he was manipulative (for so are all; and I expected some manipulation). It was that his was out of context. His was part of a much more pragmatic life plan than I thought. For instance his hard time at his original job in the US was not because of the assholes around him. Rather it was him that was the asshole, always trying to get ahead for its own sake. He still cared about his work and about those around him but not in the way I thought. During our move to Sweden he approached dozens of companies I didn't know about and set about weaving a contingency plan, just in case I didn't make it, or we didn't make it. I could list dozens of incidents, none of them important when taken alone. Together they were fatal in establishing that David was duplicitous, and clearly not who I thought he was. Or rather he wasn't who I thought he was at the beginning. He most certainly was who I suspected he might be by the last few weeks of our marriage. The info didn't depress me. I think I already lived out that depression back in the world when I had my initial doubts. It was almost a relief, a sense of closure. I certainly didn't hate him nor have any negativity about him, just the knowledge that this shouldn't be and the sooner I part ways from him the sooner we can both go in the directions we intend. There was of course the sadness of wasting much of my time when I could have been doing something that would have turned out to be more meaningful. But I wasn't ashamed. Just aware of the possibility of a whole life after my current husband, a meaningless materialist existence that other cultures would have labeled as pure hedonism. But for me it would have more substance. So I decided. And then things became incredibly easy. It didn’t matter where I ended up. There, I had endless opportunity to be lost in the wondrous world that a single human being that I saw represented. And to think of multiplying this wondrousness to other beings! And here, I had the Outer Songs to listen to, the harmonies of the planets to hear with eagerness. Really, these were two sides of the same coin. I was entranced with Clara because of Mars’s song and I could appreciate the Song from knowing Clara. In other words it was my own mind, my own interpretation, that was the key to what the world is like, both here and there.

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15. From Jacob to Israel.

You need to spend time alone to find the balance, the middle ground. That's what I always do, because I am a Buddhist.

God in Southpark

The Designer's building appeared before me. Once again it wasn't the palace you might have expected the average “vision” of the Designer to have. It wasn't my original Viking hall either. Instead I was standing on a dusty unsealed road somewhere in the wilderness. Surrounding me were dry bushes with thorns that indicated the bareness of life in the plants. The sky was overcast enough for there to be no highlights on anything I saw. This is the first time I've experienced the sky here. The other thing that struck me was the silence. It was the wilderness but no beasts cluttered the space between the horizon and my eyes. The upper half of my environment was devoid of any kind of birds, not even those of prey. With an increased wonder (as to what my projection of the Designer could have meant this time), I looked ahead trying to find the building. I was standing within thirty metres of a hut made possibly of straw or reeds. It was circular and had a sloping conical roof. I couldn't see the entrance from this angle, nor could I tell what kind of place this could possibly have come from. Southeast Asia?

Africa? It mattered not. The hut marked the start of a few rows of huts, less than a town but more than a bare settlement or base camp. The road continued through the huts for about a hundred metres ending in a larger rectangular hut. There it was. The hut of hegemony. I could even tell this from its shape due to the corners and straight lines symbolising a certain harshness and rigidity that dominated the unimposing arcs of the lesser huts.

With some trepidation I began to walk through this array of living space. Of course it wasn't living. The first thing that yanked me back to reality was the sight of heads. I was finally within the line of sight of all the entrances and they all had human heads hanging off the front of the entrance. Not on spikes but just hanging and still, there being absolutely no wind to disturb their verticality. I shuddered at the increasing ominous symbolism. Not only were there heads but there was a definite progression. The ones near me had their eyes and mouths closed. The ones at the Hut of Hegemony had both eyes and mouths open all the way, the ones in the middle halfway and so on. I paused, not daring to step further until I made some sense of this. At the same time I noticed the actual road and my uneasiness shot up again. It was meticulous. Like someone had swept it very regularly to protect it from any random variation or chaos of dust. No, the dust particles were arranged in one layer only: the road was completely flat. The huts were also arranged with perfect regularity. Someone had planned this whole settlement. It turned out exactly how it was intended, that was the most imposing part of the whole experience. Perhaps I watched Apocalypse Now a few too many times in my earthly life but this was different. This was no massacre of innocents at a village. This was all created like this, the heads were placed there from the start. And they weren't heads too of course, it was only me who saw them as such. I hope it is unnecessary to state where I was and what the heads were; just that after this observation I went back to looking at the heads progressively opening their eyes and mouths. The ones closest to me were peaceful in Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 81

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their closed eyes because there was nothing there, they were nihilistic heads who didn't see the order of the village. Walking closer to the front I also observed my own discomfort at seeing the heads with their eyes open taking in all this order. It was like these heads were deader than the unseeing heads.

My symbolism had become too blatant for me to continue being horrified or even to continue watching. I attacked the dirt road and it fled under my feet dragging the grand hut towards me. This one was different. It was made of reeds too, to be sure, but the outer walls were carved with intricate designs that I could only interpret as fractals. However none of this mattered anymore so I went about my only real concern and stepped inside. I remembered the bareness from the Viking hut as well as the place where I met Greg but this was of a new order of minimalism. A floor. Some light was coming in through various holes in the wall --I wouldn't really call them windows. And right there on the floor was the same blob of light that I associated so clearly with the Designer. Unlike the rest of the environment, it changed not from our previous encounter.

"Welcome Cassi. I understand you intended to see me?"

"Yes, very astute of you" I said with a surprising cheeriness considering what I had just observed.

"Sure. By the way this whole vision of yours is a bit harsh don't you think?"

"Perhaps to you. It does its job for me. For now."

"Sure. Now you're aware of your situation. What would you like?"

"My wish is to return to my body in the Sculpture in time to be found alive. This would involve losing all of my experiences here: either forgetting them or better still attributing them to my imagination. Which as you know isn't that far from the truth. And returning to my humble material existence."

"Good. And if I refuse?"

"Then I must ask you to destroy me. I'm sure there are ways to pull apart an Intelligence, after all I know that even in this nonmaterial plane I'm still made up of composite parts even if they're much more complicated than the composite parts of my body."

"I assume you have some backup plan if I refuse this too?"

"Well I have nothing I can really threaten you with due to the fact that my powers in this world are rather limited. However I can await until I die and then I'll have more opportunity. I can't destroy you or myself but I can still become a thorn in your whole creation. That Fernando guy who killed his family is pretty much an outcast here for reasons which I refuse to accept but he seems not to be throwing tantrums. This is something I will do though. Probably because I'm more desperate, more outraged by the situation than him. I'll scream to every Intelligence I can find about how pointless and stupid and cruel the alleged profoundness of this whole arrangement is. I'll do my best to disrupt everything. I'm sure the movement of the planets, getting into exactly the right orbit and exactly the right key, takes some concentration. I probably won't be able to do much in terms of physical disruption. But I sure will make things unpleasant." Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 82

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I stopped and took a breath. There was a certain amount of pride that I felt at my defiance. There was in this state of being, of standing up for what was right to me over the tractable rightness of the Designer's world. At that moment another feeling happened upon me, that everything will work out whatever the consequences.

"You certainly don't waste time. Have you considered the consequences of your actions?"

"You mean how I will be human again and have all those opportunities you advertised so brilliantly at our last meeting?"

"Ha ha, good point. Rather I meant the pros and cons. I realise you believe that getting away from my design will be a pro since that's what you obviously want to do."

"Obviously."

"What about the cons?"

"Sure I'm aware of them. Do you think I'm going into this with closed eyes? I can even list them for your benefit."

"Do."

"I will suffer. Tremendously, as all must during the course of their stay in the Material. I will lack resources and will have that thirst and craving for more that I've developed. I'll leave the comfort of this existence and go out into the cold again, literally into the blizzard. The volume of tears I shall cry from the time I’ll return will exceed all the oceans on earth. I enter into a divorce that could potentially be messy and I don't know what will happen. My relationship with everyone I care for could sour to the point where it would be worse than if I didn't return and worse than if I died. Of course I'll also have to face old age, disease and death in a most real way: mine and those around me. I will see unspeakable cruelty again in its most realistic form. I may poo-poo this plane but the gratuitous suffering there will be far more intense, far more real. And I won't be able to do much about it. Even if I dedicate my life to helping the bruised and the beaten, which I'll probably not be in a position to do, I'll at best make an iota or two of difference. I may feel that the world is constantly spiraling in a downward path. Just like many philosophical, religious and just plain old common sense systems of thought I may see the universe in a state of constant deterioration. Or better still an accelerating deterioration. The age of Kali will be getting closer and closer and each day may be worse than the last. And there'll be no answers, no final purpose. Just the prospect of the piece of meat that I'm in finally rotting to the point where enough cells have rotted that it's no longer expedient to keep the rotting cells in a process of constant reanimation and so someone decides that that process of reanimation should cease."

"Is that all? What you said applies to every person when they are born. After all they all go into the Blizzard, really."

"I wasn't finished! Yes, these are all things all must face. I have two more groups of problems, as if the group I just outlined wasn't enough. Firstly there's the problem of memory. If I lose it I may not have developed anything from my stay here. I may go on to make exactly those mistakes that I could avoid by just remembering what went on here. I could avoid leaving my husband and become more embondaged every week making it harder and harder to realise that I must leave, and of course harder and harder to perform Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 83

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the physical and emotional act of departure. If on the other hand I do keep my memory I may have an even worse time. For starters, if I'm perfectly lucid about everything I'll know too much. It will all seem a bit unreal for me. I may develop mental illnesses and may even have to be institutionalised...At least Clara can visit me every week and feed me soup from a big spoon". I just had to break the atmosphere I was building up in the room. Interestingly enough I was feeling stronger and stronger with each sentence uttered, knowing that my decision was correct. I pressed on homewards. "I will also lose many of the opportunities and compressions of embodiment, perhaps the most vital ones. If I knew exactly what happened after death, what the world really was, surely it must impair me in my human pursuits. If the point of embodiment is for the Intelligence to get so carried away by the physical that it goes on to achieve something, won't I simply not achieve because I won't be carried away any more? It will also seem so cheap and pointless. I'll feel everything I feel here but I won't even have the freedoms I now have. There's the third option of some kind of dimming of my memory in which case I'm placing my very being at the mercy of the dice. Finally I'll have to return to all this once I die again, and perhaps all this extra pointless cramped congested compressed existence would have been for nothing. I may end up in exactly the same situation later, having merely signed up for a few more decades of suffering... So how did I do? Did I list all of the cons?"

"Actually yes."

"Surely you can see now that if I want it so badly after knowing all the problems that I must really want it very very badly indeed."

The blob left its place and started moving around the room. I guessed it was the equivalent of pacing without a human representation.

"If you do, the other Intelligences will be shocked."

"Why, am I the first renegade to ask this?"

"Actually you are. I mean very few are ever in your position: being here but still only being able to use the human senses. It's much harder than just dying. Most have some issues but they've all decided to stay. Some even begged to stay after it turned out they were to come out of their coma or whatever state they were in."

"So I'm the first of-"

"About 20 million Intelligences in your situation over the ages."

"Wow! I guess I'm already a thorn then."

"Well you can't exactly be a thorn. But unlike you I'm not restricted to the human senses. And I can see that your Intelligence is something different. I like it."

"Oh so I'm another step towards success for you right? A more involved consciousness..."

"Are you offended?"

"Not at all. See, I'm prepared to go back and follow the human rulebook so why would I be horrified that my Intelligence is also following its own broader rulebook? On the other hand if the other Intelligences are all satisfied here then this lackeyism must be caused by that soul rulebook. Then being a human is better because this is inadequate." Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 84

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It drooped. If I were visualising the Designer as a human, his or her lower lip would have protruded at this point.

"Oh relax," I comforted it, feeling confident at the fact that I was in a situation where I could provide comfort to the creator. Even if was of the jocular kind. "I'm amazed at the structure of the universe as you've come up with. I think that's wonderful and I loved seeing it all. It's rather the purpose that I'm not crazy about."

"You don't want any purpose do you? Just nihilism. That's the main reason you want to go back isn't it?"

"Yes yes! It's like you...see right through me!" I said winking. By then I realised the tension was gone. This was no longer an angry scene, in fact it never was. I wasn't throwing a tantrum, at least not from the Designer's perspective. Rather, I was an Intelligence with an unusual take on things.

"Don't you think that your lack of appreciation for the purpose of the universe comes from your restricted understanding?"

"Maybe. I mean maybe after my real death I'll have a different idea. In which case it would have been worth it anyhow. But I don't think so. If I was the first to have this idea in this state who's to say I won't be disappointed again when I'm here completely? You?

But you'd have to be omniscient!"

"Yeah. Perhaps you'll end up being a thorn in this whole plan unavoidably. Or instead you could turn out as the next step, a catalyst for an improved purpose and all those fabulous things...You weren't really expecting to be destroyed were you?"

"No, I'm not Job that I can just blaspheme you and incur your wrath thus ending it all."

"You're not Job," the Designer proclaimed in a warm voice, "but I think Jacob has just become Israel."

"Thanks! I'll try to live up to the name in the future."

"What about the practical nature of putting you back? Don't you think it would be a bit too interventionist, too miraculous?"

"Far less than your dinosaur-killing comet. Besides if you have such high hopes for me it would be justified to further your project. All that must happen is for me to awake in the next hour in time for the rescue party to find me revivable."

"Looks like you've just gotten me to agree."

"What about memories?"

"The only practical thing is to keep them. But they will become less clear as a natural consequence of you following the human algorithm again."

"Right. Maybe it's for the best," I mused, more to myself than for the benefit of anyone whether it be Designer, Intelligence or reader.

"You've had your turn, now I'll talk...I admire you very much. I guess I say this to everyone but I did a damn fine job when I created your Intelligence out of the pieces. It's a nice pattern. So, all you have to do is focus on your attention back on your piece of Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 85

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meat (as you aptly called it) that was so nicely preserved in the Scandinavian freezer. The Intelligences who weave the Sculpture will do the rest and your attention will stay fixed there. Do this in the next thirty minutes of time at that point in the Sculpture. This leaves you with some time here. There's one thing I think you should do. Of course you'd have done it anyway but I wanted you to know I know that you would have. You'll have visited him again without my mentioning anything, so go forth and do it with my knowledge. And blessing."

"Of course I’ll see him, I admit it most emphatically."

"The other thing is that the chance of anyone in the material plane believing you are close to nothing. They'll claim you made all of this up."

"I won't reveal. To anyone who won't understand" I added quickly darting the Designer a glance that It in turn understood perfectly. "Plus they'd be right. In effect I did make this up; but it'll still have a major effect on my existence."

The blob floated off the floor and I stood up knowing this most memorable of audiences was over. "Goodbye Cassi. Although you're probably getting ready to treat yourself as mortal again, let me say that I look forward to having this thorn in my side for eternity." Despite all the strangeness that surrounded the world as I now knew it, I realised one inevitable fact: the Designer must be endowed with a sense of humour. I nodded and even did a curtsy. It wasn't even from sarcasm but was a genuine gesture, although delivered with irony as always. Then I turned around and lost sight of the Designer forever and walked towards the entrance for the last time for I'll be a mortal again and this will all be a dream even if for a few measly decades! When I pronounced the word 'dream' in my head I realised that I stepped out of the hut and started falling softly and gracefully. Kurtz's Apocalypse Now huts were gone and instead the hut was raised a few hundred metres above a great plain filled with the most stunning autumn leaves. Yellow, red, orange, lime, they were all there in droves and droves, with the millions piling up into a rather soft layer that were going to cushion me at the end of my fall. I fell, noticing the hut's fractals once more. Nothing could mar the joy and lightness of my decent. A descent that successfully hinted at my future descent into a material beauty no less stunning --despite all the shit amongst those leaves. So I fell.

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16. Nihilism Triumphant

Beatrice gazed upon me with her eyes

Full of the sparks of love, and so divine,

That, overcome my power, I turned my back

And almost lost myself with eyes downcast.

Paradiso, Dante

The room that I knew would have Greg in it was no different than the last time we spoke. Unlike last time I couldn't go straight in but hesitated with my hand participating in an extended communion with the door handle. What was I to do? Although he did understand everything during our last meeting, too well in fact, I had a lot to make up for. The other hesitation was the fact that already by this moment I should be trying to forget everything here especially him. To push him out of my memory, or at least to its background, in order to continue with my material existence unimpeded. There was something scary about standing outside the door and grasping the knob for dear life, waiting to twist but hesitating. Each time I gathered up the courage to turn it my intestines twisted in a new direction and I couldn't bring myself to, resulting in a series of emotional waves that made it seem like I've been standing there for hours. Of course only a few seconds would have passed in the real world. The real world. That's what made me snap out of my narcissistic wallowing. You moron. The hounds have been released and you're the rabbit. In but a ridiculously short while the whole army of searchers will be drawn to your flesh like bloodhounds, and you're floating around here in self-pity about how traumatic it will be? I pushed open the door and went in.

The room was much the same but the single piece of furniture was different. Instead of the wooden chair I used to interrogate there was a soft couch with two parts joined together at right angles Perfect. This had to be a cooperative arrangement not a competitive cluster where we'd be staring each other down from across each other's gaze. Not that I could have withstood his gaze after all the things I said last time. Greg was sitting on the bench but not on the bare wood. He had two gorgeous cushions with an exterior of orange silk and he was using one and had his hand out for the other cushion on the other side of the bench, not even needing to motion towards it, that's how welcoming his presence was. However I couldn't join him just yet. Instead I glided around the room in an arc that curved to finish right in front of him. Saying nothing I put my arm on his shoulder. I didn't know what I was going to do before we started talking but I surprised even myself at my outburst. Virtually involuntarily I sank to a kneeling position grasping his knees. I would have kissed his foot had he not stopped me. When he did restrain me I just managed to get out a breath of I'm sorry before he helped me onto the seat. He didn't grab and lift me but somehow assisted in me floating up onto the cushion. Or at least that's how I remember it...

"It's ok. You know it is. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't upset at our last meeting. But you know I couldn't help but appreciate a certain proportion of what you had said. One hundred percent."

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"Still, I had no right to do this to you. And to myself. Anyway I don't mind any more. Yes there is something wrong with this whole universe as it turns out. But things were almost the same in the world too. Back there, there was also something hideously wrong, something I knew but couldn't exactly point my linguistic apparatus at to express. But on earth I was overjoyed at your contribution to it all, and that of others. It was what made even that hideously wrong thing lose its terribleness. Here though I slipped for a bit because I could see the hideously-wrong-thing very clearly. Again though, I realise that you make even this thing better too."

"Good. As --as do you. For me I mean."

"Tell me do all souls react like I did?"

"The experience of seeing loved ones is never this complete sense of joy like people may think on earth. There's always a little bit of trauma. But most souls are here with their full faculties unlike you and even ones like you get over it pretty quickly. I've never seen a reaction like yours. I guess you are special because there's never been a reaction like your one to the Designer either. Part of the same package I guess. You saw and interpreted meaning in this plane of existence in a way that nobody else has."

"You attribute this to my restricted senses and this alleged property of me being special, just like the Designer does?"

"What else could it be but that last thing?" he pronounced carefully and deliberately with an innocent smile. "Like, I was also disappointed at something about the universe. But not like you."

We sat in joyful silence for a bit, a silence that reminded me of my silence with Clara on That Day --and I'll be treasuring both of these silences for as long as I'm able to, which is apparently forever in a literal sense.

"So you've decided, bought the ticket and are going back out there."

"Yeah. And I know it's absolutely for the best."

"So do I. This has caused quite a scandal among the Intelligences. A raucous is happening as we speak. Will be happening too, for a long time. Things are moving."

"Could this be exacerbated by the fact that I actually managed to put myself in a position that apparently conflicted with the Designer's?"

"Exacerbated? It's the juiciest part of the scandal." I laughed. "I always was a blasphemer at heart, that's why you adored me so."

"And still do. So as for your plans? I mean when you become entombed in the Sculpture once more."

"Who knows? But it won't matter. I'll have things there that I could never experience in this realm. You know, I've obviously discovered that materialism and nihilism have their benefits. There's a certain degree of reality which makes them more real than this. Kinda like back on earth when I used to visit planned towns, they'd be lovely and all neat and purposeful but it's not the same as a real organic place. I'd appreciate all the conveniences of having streets at right angles and clean sidewalks and trees planted at regular intervals. Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 88

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As well as the low crime rate, the high standard of living and education. I guess the practical advantages form a very long list indeed."

"Yeah but you felt there was something missing in those places?"

"There was. I would never have wanted to live there. I guess I lie shamelessly because much of Sweden is like that anyway. But my heart belongs to the organic. Even if there's more pollution and misery and general crapness. I like sprawling medieval city centre streets that wind and meander amongst themselves in a manner that's almost decadent. I guess that's just how I want life to be. Of course the planning part of the material world has really to do with a centralised government that tries to plan everything. Perhaps in this respect the plane we're currently in is different. There's a certain degree of chaos and freedom. The Intelligences don't exactly all operate under the beat of the same drum. In fact this was the best part about seeing the music of the planets. Still, it’s all too planned."

"Kind of like the Brasilia or Canberra of the universe."

"Precisely! And the purpose is too planned. Better to have no purpose than to have this one. There's a certain dignity in the material life I'm about to face. It will be real. I'll get the opportunity to be bruised again, to experience the reality of loss."

"I take it you're also not thrilled about this existence having an everything-will-be-ok quality to it."

"Indeed I am very unthrilled about that."

"It's not going to be all heartaches though and you know it. You've much happiness to look forward to. For starters you're part of a family now. An unorthodox one but still you weren't proclaimed ungodparent for nothing!"

"Oh that. Yes. But again I can't be sure if my soulfriendship with her will last, just like I couldn't be sure about my one with you. Clara could die or I could die or we could have fallout. It's the uncertainty of it that's central though. I'm prepared to take uncertainty. Here, everything is up to me and my Intelligence whereas there I must negotiate between that and all the other countless forces combining in countless combinations. I know I'll succeed in the greatest challenge in that I will have happiness pretty much no matter what actually occurs simply because I'm me. The altered post-post-mortem me I should say." I realised we were staring in virtually the same direction despite the rightangledness of our seating arrangements. It was time to say goodbye but not before I got the rest of it out.

"I'm going right about now so I must continue my original request and ask that you just listen because I need to say this. You asked me why I'm so dissatisfied with the Designer's plan for upholding consciousness through this material life. I mean you didn't ask me explicitly but I think you're dying to know. And I've just realised a good way of expressing my answer. It's all about explanations. The nature of an explanation is that it must reduce or simplify what is being explained. Tanaka originally shocked me about there being no names here because there is no need for simplification. I think I understand now and realise that this extends from language to explanation. If I can express a concept in totality then I don't need to explain it, I can just show it directly just like instead of naming someone here you just focus on them in the conversation. So Escape from Eternal Life – free PDF version from http://anadder.com/eternal_life 89

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explanations can be successful by simplifying. But only for local answers. Why did I become a graphic designer? Why was Harem Girl not tempted by the vizier in the end of the third story despite all that happened between them? Why do pine trees have cones?

All of these have answers and I'd love to answer these three questions for you and more. In fact during life we answered billions of questions like these to each other with each other and about each other. But this doesn't work for explaining the whole of the universe, almost by definition. In a way the Designer's purpose is doomed to be unsatisfactory to me by elimination. If there is no explanation then I'd perhaps be disappointed that this world is for nothing. Maybe it's the best option being closest to material nihilism. But still it couldn't be true because there it's impossible for there to be no explanation for how all this came about." My nonphysical arm gestured as I said this, across the nonphysical room, outside and beyond. I continued. If there was an explanation though, then there are two possibilities. Either I could understand it or not. If I couldn't I'd be dissatisfied that it was impenetrable. Perhaps the Eastern Orthodox monk cloistered in his cell contemplating the true nature of original sin or something-or-other (to no avail of course!) is a good example of this uninformed frustration. Why oh why did you make it so mysterious and complicated? Certainly I can't be satisfied with an explanation I can't understand because that explanation is actually a mere promise of an explanation. If on the other hand I could understand it, as I can in this case, in this plane, then I'd be dissatisfied because there is an explanation. This is exactly what I've been feeling during my stay here. Any explanation for the whole world and its purpose must feel cheap. Base. Of course I'd feel cheated! So the best thing is to just get on with things and not to worry about explanations altogether for they only get us into trouble. This is my nihilism, not affirming the meaninglessness of it all but rather just being concerned with other things. Maybe this is the only way for humans (and Intelligences) to be happy. I guess we need purposelessness which provides us with a blank slate. Otherwise what on earth are we to do with ourselves?

"This is like my experience as a pig. I didn't know I was one and so Intelligences shouldn't know they're Intelligences. This is exactly what a nihilistic existence in the sculpture provides and it's better that way. In a way, we're all pigs, them being most lovely creatures that perform honest toil. Only my honest toil would be my nihilism.

"There's also the question of us. I know we'll see each other again. And yes this is a comfort. But for the sake of my earthly life I must once again treat you as forever gone. I need the possibility of this eternal loss if I'm to have my nihilistic human joy. I know in terms of memory it will be unrealistic to just forget our two meetings here. And I wouldn't want to either. One thing I will have though, in any case, is my suffering. This will cause me to treat you as forever gone: the suffering I went through when you were forever gone. I still have the pains of your death and our separation and the rest. And this is something I don't want to be compensated for. Neither here nor there, not now and not ever. That's what upset me at seeing you first. I felt like the Designer was offering compensation, which I scornfully rejected. But I realise that as long as I'm not willing to be compensated I can still be me, can't I?

"So you don't dread our next inevitable meeting?"

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"Not at all. Perhaps next time I'll even gladly accept the Designer's whole design! I don't know. That's the beauty of life. Or at least life as I know it --it may not be the beauty of the actual nonmaterial world after all."

We hugged for an indeterminate amount of time, just like my first experience of waking up dead. Greg broke the indeterminacy.

"Wait. I don't want to end this on a heavy note. So I'll do the whole obligatory speech I should have done if I were another Intelligence. Here goes: but you'll suffer so much!" he proclaimed in a mock dramatic voice, "Surely you remember how bad things could get. Plus it'll be more complicated now!...Right, I'm done, I couldn't keep the act up for that long."

"Good. And good to my future life with suffering in it. And on account of the extra complications. It's what I want. At least I won't be bored: I have more room on the blank slate to do my obscene graphic designs on. Oh, and you were right all along about certain rocks being capable of profound thought, so next time I see you I owe you a lunch." Things felt right and light again. Just like my triumphant audience with the Designer but more so. I saluted my soulmate and left. Well he is! I thought. And this time I have empirical proof; what with my stay here and my experiencing of actual souls. Of course he's one of several. And hopefully many more in the future.

I suddenly thought of the Sculpture, the place where I was about to go to in order to switch focus. It seemed wondrous again. I thought of it as constantly growing but instead of going towards the Designer's intended destination it was just a blank slate. A nihilistic machine growing in an unplanned undirected direction.

I loved it.

Postscript Note

My darling readers! I now call you that, whether you are reading this testament on the material or nonmaterial plane. It doesn't matter any more. You've endured so much of my tantrum-like style of storytelling. Not that there was a story in fact, just a long experience. But thankyou. Anyway as I'm about to be put back in the Sculpture any second now I just wanted to beg your forgiveness for perhaps disclosing too much. It was nothing like the volume I saw; after all, I experienced the totality of space-time! But as you know this whole thing was a hallucination of sorts anyway as I constructed each experience, so you can just dismiss everything I said as untrue and ignore it if you want to (and perhaps understanding the non-material plane naturally predisposes one to ignore it and focus on the real world). Also, as this turned out to be a positive experience for me, preparing me for material life with a joy that dwarfs any I had felt before. Perhaps it can do so for you without you having to actually freeze to a semi-dead state. Speaking of which, I look into the world and I see the rescuers are but a few hundred metres from my meat machine so I'm fare thee well.

Wishing you a thousand meaningless blank slates to create your own nihilistic pigsty on!

Love, Cassi.

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