Something happened Friday…

In the beginning

That Friday started like a lot of days. The sleep dragon tried unsuccessfully to drag me back into its lair. I brushed away her entreaties and sat up, got up. I suited up for the day ahead. Today: finishing drywall repair for a client. While in my bathroom, I read “The hunt for pure consciousness” by Alun Anderson in the April 27 to May 3 issue of New Scientist.

The article reviewed a new book by Thomas Metzinger, The Elephant and the Blind. I, somehow, had not encountered Metzinger’s work during the previous decade while reading a stack of books taller than me about consciousness.

I had even started drafting an essay using the same analogy. I think the story of the seven blind men and the elephant aptly describes how the scientific community at large examines consciousness, each describing some part, unable to see the whole. That is when I boarded my train of thought for the day. I would indulge myself in all the journey had to offer while observing and participating in the day ahead.

Catching the C train

That New Scientist article references another Metzinger book where he proposed “that no such thing as selves exist in the world.” I have come to the same conclusion having read numerous articles and interviews with people whose brain hemispheres had surgically been separated in a procedure called a Corpus Callosotomy. In those articles under scrupulous scientific circumstances, communicating with post-surgery patients revealed vastly different personalities presented by each half of their brains. None of those people were, reportedly, any longer ‘themselves’ post callosotomy.

This information seriously calls into question: Who is that person in my mirror?

The answer to that question lay in another conclusion I reached in my consciousness research – Every living cell on this planet is conscious. There are 37 trillion cells (human and not human) that make up the multicellular organism homo sapiens. That ‘person’ in the mirror is simply the ‘personality,’ synthesized by the brain from all those conscious cells, displayed for their common survival, procreation, and pleasure. A very simplified comparison would be New York City. Mayor Eric Adams is not New York City. He is simply the face the residents of New York collectively presents to the world.

Finally together, and out the door in/on that train while I drove across town to my job at Carla’s house. As I was backing my work van into her driveway, she and her dog, Milo, greeted me.  Carla and Elise are, like most of my clients, warm, wonderful, outgoing, vibrant souls. Milo should have his picture in the dictionary next to ‘standard poodle.’ For years he would not let me near him. Lately, however, he greets me as if I am a sorely missed member of the family.

Once parked, I started dragging tools and materials out of my van for the task ahead. When I had tools inside the front door, Astro nuzzled me. He was beside himself with joy. I remarked to Carla that the unconditional love that dogs show us is remarkable. She countered with a story about her grandmother who loved her little dog dearly. Carla,’ quoting her grandmother, “That little dog would wag all over whenever I come through the door. At my age no one still wags all over when I enter a room.” We laughed. I said that not even my wife greets me like that. Then I wagged all over to demonstrate. We laughed again.

A?$x%-@”m/?

I headed back to the van for more tools and materials. When I opened the storm door and stepped out and down the one step… it happened. The thought train I was on derailed off a bridge over a deep ravine, engine, boxcars, and all.

I plunged into the immediacy all around me, as if a gong had sounded ushering in a clarity so loud it was deafening. Instantly my perception hit 10. Everything around me was bigger, closer, richer, brighter, louder…

and yet, silent.

 

For an instant everything stopped…

 

 

then began to shuffle

xxxxxxxxxlike

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxthe

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxframes

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxof

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxfilm

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxon

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxa

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxprojector

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxgetting

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxup to speed.

The beauty was so overwhelming I almost cried. Every blade of grass was leaping toward the sky, every leaf fluttered seductively in the barely perceptible breeze, every cloud in the miraculously blue sky breathed silently, filling my attention. I could feel every hair on my body. Every motion of the dog across the street and its human friend was a scene in a two-character one act play of simplicity filled with purpose.

I have no idea how long it took to get to my AI enhanced van. What seemed like decades later, I was finally standing before the wall I was repairing. The patched area was swimming around the lake/wall as if I were staring down at it from a cliff high above.

Finishing and painting that wall felt like a dance so well-rehearsed it appears as easy as an improvisation. When I was done, I quietly left.  I slowly, regrettably, returned from that infinity over the course of the day much like returning from a magic mushroom vacation.

In the brightness, during the intensity I could almost see…

What we sense is only a sliver of the bandwidth available to each of our five senses. What we cannot consciously see or hear or smell or taste or feel dwarfs even the most fertile of imaginations. Anyone who tells you that what our meagre senses pick up is all there is and then we die is mistaken. I do not know what lies beyond the beauty and enormity of all we experience with our consciousness but, on a really good day, when disparate branches of a moment snap into alignment, I can almost see what is on the other side of the veil of that which we call reality.

It is exhilarating.