“There is something I’ve wanted to ask. What’s it like to travel in time? I can imagine it is a blast, like lick’n the spoon?”
“I don’t think I’d put it like that. Tell me Bill; do you always remember your dreams? Some people don’t.
“I remember some of them. Others, I can’t remember anything but the emotion; fear, happiness, whatever.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m getting at. I know I’ve been somewhere and had an experience of some sort but I can’t always put it into words or even remember who I was dealing with before or during. While I’m there everything I see and do are quite clear but when I return, that clarity often goes away.”
“How do you know it’s not a dream?”
“Truthfully, I can’t always be sure. Maybe it is because when it’s a dream, the before and the, after match and the dream itself stands pretty much alone; at least in most cases. With actual time travel, the before and after are likely not to match up. And of course the intervening, as far as anyone knows, is as likely as not to be quite dream like. Do you follow? Are we dreaming now?”
“No; of course not.”
“Bingo! It’s usually that clear.”
“Oh; sure, I guess it would be, or not?”
“Another distinguishing thing is that my memory is altered. Actually I think my memories are selectively edited. Some experiences and memories just don’t or can’t cross the boundary; others make it through intact. Why, I don’t know. It could have something to do with the potential for harm to me or to others.”
“You are saying that some of your memories are deliberately blanked?”
“Yes. Some of the things that should be perfectly clear are just plain gone. Other things that seem inconsequential are as clear as this morning’s breakfast. Consider this; the past and the future are distinguished only by the present; it has already finished happening. It’s like we’re watching a movie that contains both at once, the beginning and the end; and us in the middle somewhere. We think we haven’t seen the end because it hasn’t happened yet; when in fact it has. So I think that memory selectivity is a benefit of some sort.”
“Give me an example?”
“Sure. Do you remember what happened tomorrow?”
“No, of course not.”
“How about a minute from now?”
“What are you getting at?”
“What I’m getting at is that, you think you couldn’t remember a minute from now; when in fact, a minute from now, or maybe a year from now, has already happened. We just haven’t arrived there yet, and that information is not registering as a memory.”
“You got a lot of shoveling to do on that one.”
“You actually have as much access to the future and the past as I do. It is only because the ‘cosmic’ censor chooses to blank your view of the future that you think that you don’t know what it is; but you do.”
“”I do? Show me?”
“Well okay. I know this exercise works so I’ll leave it to you to do later. Take a deck of cards. Shuffle and deal, say, fifteen cards, face up. Give yourself oh maybe thirty seconds to review the cards. Turn them face down. Record your recollections of the sequence and then turn the cards face up again and record the correct sequence. Identify them as set ‘#1 Guesses’ and ‘#1 Actuals’ then repeat the process for set #2 and so on. After you’ve completed ten or so then stop and individually tally the results in the form of a percent of correct guesses on each set. Now compare ‘#1 Guesses’ to the ‘#2 Actuals’; ‘#2 Guesses to #3 Actuals’ and so on. Again, compare and tally, and calculate the percentage of correct guesses. Remember you are now comparing your guesses, not with the original sequential order dealt but with the future order that had not yet been dealt. The first time may seem like a fluke, but after you find that you are consistently better at guessing future sets, then the present set, I am sure you will agree that you are responding to the future more than the present. This test doesn’t effectively show this phenomenon with everyone but with some it is distinctly reproducible.
I think those who can see with greater deltas into the future operate in life with greater freedom and less fear of the risks.
Of course I guess another possibility may be that you are unconsciously controlling the shuffle, and are deliberately ordering the next deal to match the previous set of guesses. Albert Einstein might call that the “lesser of sound reason.””
“Are you serious? This isn’t saying much for life as we know it.”
“Exactly; it is still possible that I’m delusional but again, as Albert put it, “pick the easiest possible explanation first.””
“What does this all say about free will?”
“I’ve kicked that can down the road a few times, but it is what it is. We tend to equate free will with the product rather than the passion. When we come to the “Y” in the road, God doesn’t care much which way we chose to go, He cares why we chose it. It is the condition of the heart that He assesses. We are going to end up as He chooses in spite of ourselves; as surely as the pinball exits through the gate at the bottom of the game field. It may take a longer or shorter course but it will, never the less, exit via the last gate. The bumpers we encounter in life are incidental to our value to the Lord. He loves us unconditionally.”
“He loves us unconditionally? Come on! How could He have loved Judas? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Oh He loved Judas. But I think that he didn’t like him much. Like and Love are quite different. The word like is used only once or twice in my bible. And then, it is used primarily to indicate a similarity, in a comparison. As far as the other meaning goes, God doesn’t say that I have to like anyone. He does say that I am responsible to love others. Love is measured by our response to the needs of others above our own. That’s not to say that we need to respond to their wants; just their serious needs. He gives us the capacity for love, and thus, the responsibility to apply it when we are able. And He says that if we are inhabited by His spirit, which is the spirit of love, then we can seamlessly and transparently love without conscious effort; it will be our image of God, our creation given reflection of His being. That’s the way we are created in his image. Without a doubt we will screw up on occasion, but as long as we do not deny His spirit of forgiveness, He is faithful to forgive us.”
“You make it sound easy. Why are you still flopping around here with the rest of us?”
“’Stupid’ doesn’t appear in my bible either. I’ve made some pretty dumb choices. But who knows, it may be my job to do dumb stuff at times. He is looking for my obedience and acknowledgement of His eminence in my life. ‘Mine is not to reason why.’ Do you remember the little dude that always followed the horses in the parade; that may be moi. I’m not sure what God has planned for me. Maybe it was for this one day.
When Jesus was asked about the blind man whose eyesight He had just healed in the presence of the Pharisees, they wanted to know the cause of his blindness; was it his sin or the sin of his parents. Jesus answered “Neither. This man was blind from birth, that God may be glorified.” The blind man earned a place in the bible and yet did nothing holy except to receive, from God. It isn’t clear that he even understood who had healed him. Who then am I to wonder about God’s plan for my life? He’ll bring it about in spite of my ignorance; maybe even if I get in the way.”
“Tell me more about this connection we have with the future.”
“My connection isn’t any better than yours but I think I know what you’re asking. Do you remember a guy by the name of Edward Casey?”
“Yes. Wasn’t he a fortune . . no . . a prognosticator?”
“Yup. He acknowledged that most anyone could do what he did. He would have an interviewer prepared with questions as he went into his “trance”. The trance involved remaining suspended in the moment between awake and asleep. We all or maybe I should say most of us would on occasion experience that f
eeling of ‘falling asleep’. He said that when he arrives at that point, his eyes would involuntarily flutter. At that moment the interviewer should begin the questioning. He was able to hover in that mental state and yet respond to the questions verbally. Presumably, in that state we are on the threshold of being beyond our conscious self yet still in the body. I believe that all knowledge can be accessed from that level; the whole movie can be seen at one time, by knowing the past and the future. Even with that, I think God’s cosmic censor will blank some information from us for our own good.”
“I’ve never heard of such a state of being.”
“Sure you have. Haven’t you felt that falling sensation? Sometimes it awakens me with a start. You just have to look for it and try to respond to it. Do you remember Peter Pan?”
“Yeah, so?” Bill chortled.
“At the end; Tinker Bell tells Peter that in the future she’ll meet him in that ‘place between awake and asleep’. She’s talking about a moment common to us all.”
“That’s a fairy tale. I don’t remember that.”
“Rent the movie for goodness sake or see the play. I’m not attesting to the whole scenario, just that she is referring to an experience that is common to the human condition. The problem with operating from that state is that some of us, me included, can’t articulate what we experience. Not that there aren’t words, but we always, or even sometimes, can’t figure out which words to use.
There are a few savants who partially live in that state even while they are awake. I know of two math-savants who can do unbelievable calculations in their heads. They explain that they don’t actually calculate at all. All they do is interpret what they see when asked the math question. Some see color forms and shapes. The answer exists apart from the question; it’s just a matter of matching it up. You see the thing is that some of memory resides outside the brain. For sure some of it is in the brain, sort of like RAM storage. But in addition we have an allotment of some sort that is not resident in our heads.”
“What are you smoking?” Bill slowly shook his head in disbelief.
“Well, what can I say? There are things that I remember that ANGL can’t verify by scanning my brain. I know that doesn’t pass the sniff test with you but it does with me. I have had Edward Casey kind of dreams many times. I don’t mean the self-fulfilling prophecy kind. I mean the kind that informs me in advance of events that ultimately occur; things that have never happened to me, personally, before or since; things that I could have no control over.”
“Like what?”
“It wouldn’t do to give you an example because the certainty would be judged against your second level experience rather than my first hand sense of reality. It is real to me. How could it be real to you?”
“Cop-out. Come on; give me an example?”
“Okay, fine. I had a dream. I was standing over a young girl lying in bed and it was obvious that something bad had transpired. Exactly what is just conjecture on my part. I woke up with a start. I discussed the dream with my wife. She . . .”
“You didn’t. Seriously? With your wife?”
“Sure I did. I’m not a molester and she knows it. Beside when we have bad dreams we share them and then pray about them; against them, for them, about them, whatever. With this dream, Teal suggested that maybe the dream wasn’t for me at all. It may be for someone else and my part in it might come later. In the dream I was aware of the name “Steve”. How that name factored into the dream I didn’t know.
Teal suggested that I ‘just shelve the dream and wait for God to do something with it in his own way. Remember, You’re a servant of God, and it’s not a given that you will know the nature or the outcome of your service’.” Since I didn’t have enough to go on, that seemed like the best plan.
Besides, I might come across someone by the name of Steve that will profit by it. Then she added ‘In any case ask the Lord to use you as he wills in regard to the dream.’ I didn’t know what that would look like, but it sounded right.
I worked at a company where literally one out of every ten employees was named Steve. There were twelve in all. It was just as well; since there was no way that I could make this happen. I managed to let the temptation to act pass, for many months in fact.
My wife and I regularly hosted a ‘Home Group’ associated with our church. We did most of the coordination and leading; not that we were any different from any of the attendees. One evening I took the opportunity to lead the group in an ‘exercise in faith’ as we called it. In the exercise we would pair off. In pairs we would join one another in a short prayer asking the Lord to give us words of encouragement, revelation or even release from burden for our partner. Then we would spend a minute or two in quiet giving ourselves an opportunity to receive such a word. Finally we would share in the raw form what we received. I would caution the participants against injecting any elaboration of their own into the words that they, by faith, received. It was not intended as a time of self-glorification, theatrics or anything overwhelming. Though the exercise regularly resulted in very positive exchanges, it never got messy.”
“What do you mean “messy”?
“Often pastors of churches attempt to encourage order. It is easy to think that disorder is of the devil. However, when there is a true manifestation of the Holy Spirit within an assembly of believers, the definition of order belongs to the Holy Spirit. To our limited sense, the manifestation may well look like anything but order; messy might be more appropriate. After all it is His ball game, not ours. Not that we should seek disorder only that we should recognize whose in charge.
In the meantime, back at the dream.
My partner was a young married woman named Ellen, who was new to the group. We went through the process and it came time to share. I started first. I told her that even though I have the group do this exercise, I am not one who often gets a word. I added that most of my revelation from God comes in the form of dreams. As an example I chose the dream about Steve, believing that she probably wouldn’t be upset by it. I told her the details of the dream and added that the only name I got out of the dream was Steve. At which point she said, “Stop! My name is Steve. At least it was my nickname when I was young. That dream is for me. That man was my neighbor; he molested me. The Lord has been dealing with me on the issue of forgiveness. I know he is telling me it is time to forgive the man and move on.” I was speechless to say the least. I had not shared that dream with anyone, other than Teal, prior to that moment. I could not have intentionally orchestrated that encounter.
A statistician might not agree to its uniqueness, but I am not in need of the support of skeptics.”
“Yes but couldn’t it be . . . .”
“Including you; thank you very much.”
“Oh, I get your point.”
“Belief is in the heart of the beholder, and survives in faith by the author of faith. You are welcome to an opinion but realize that faith dwells independent of carnal agreement. After all carnal agreement is part of our carnal existence, and thus is merely a symptom of true life.”
“Slow down, Preacher.”
“I’m sorry, but you did insist.”
“Yeah. But I still want to know, ‘what is it like’? Where have you been?”
“Literally nowhere. All possibilities exist at this moment, and pretty much in the same place. I just go sideways through a few time zones, so to speak; but that dodges the issue, doesn’t it? There is nothing to feel aside from a momentary high-pitched ringing in the head. Most of the translations that I can remember involved a realm definition that injected me into the landscape at an elevation. I was far enough in the air so that I would not wind up inside a rock or under the water. From that point, I would slowly descend to the ground. The more sophisticated translations involved the transportation of consciousness only. That’s a lot safer. That is called teleportation; miss-location nev
er seems an issue. It does not involve mass and energy equilibrium. It is closely related to remote reading. Do you remember about that?”
“Yes I do. It was required reading so to speak. It is still a tongue-in-cheek science.”
“It won’t be for long. The translations of that kind were more like out of body experiences except that time change can be involved. It is probably like what the Apostle John and Ezekiel experienced in the Bible.”
“Speaking of the Bible; is the anti-christ the same each time?”
“You say anti-christ as though you see him as an individual. I think that the Apostle Paul was the one who used the term antichrist but he was referring to the mind set and character of anyone who denies the existence of God in the form of Christ. I’m talking about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Prior to the advent of Christ there would have been no cause to deny him as the Son of God. Thus the “coming of the antichrist” that Paul speaks of seems more like the rise of the voice of opposition to Christ’s association with the Godhead. I think he is talking specifically about a collective spirit of those who have been given the revelation of Christ but could not make the leap of faith.
And yes, the spirit of antichrist seems strongly present in every parallel universe I have encountered though the manifestation is in various ways. In this universe it seems to be personified in the UNIS. They are intent on purging mankind of any individual who would harbor, by faith, the hope of redemption through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Combating the antichrist mindset seems to be part of the refining process. It’s like the refining of Gold. After all this life we live is within the refiner’s pyre. This isn’t about us; it’s about him. He is building something. It is most likely a kingdom not bound by a physical realm. This universe is His field; He is the farmer and we’re the seeds that He has planted. He is refining what He will for the purpose that He chooses. He has given us free will to choose this imitation of life or to seek to enter the real thing. There are places in the Bible that equate this life with death, and true life is yet to come for the believer.
Have you ever heard of a ‘blink comparator’.”
“Well I have heard of a comparator.”
“That’s along the same lines. Now days, the process is imbedded in the software. Back in the days of dial phones, linoleum, and red-tipped white canes, the inspection of electronic assemblies things had to be processed by hand. Things like electronic circuit boards were made up of hundreds of discrete components. Each component needed to be checked to make sure that it was the proper component, in the correct place and oriented properly. Before the blink comparator was introduced a person had to visually inspect each component of each printed circuit board assembly. It took tens of minutes or even hours, depending on the complexity of the board. But with the blink comparator the inspection took a matter of seconds. An image of the subject board was superimposed over the image of a correctly assembled board. The comparator would then alternately display the two, in rapid succession. If all was correct on the subject board there would be little or no difference between the two images and they would appear as one. However if there was the least error, the faulty component would alternate right and wrong images. The alternating component appears to blink in a field of otherwise motionless components. Picking it out was a no-brainer.
A similar phenomenon occurs when I get translated into a parallel universe. The process is slower but never the less the societal ills sort of jump out at you. It is a lot like boiling a frog.”
“Drag that by again; boiling a frog?”
“What; you not up on that one?”
“Nope; ‘fraid not.”
“If you throw a frog into hot water, it merely jumps out. If you put it in cold water it is okay with that. If you slowly heat the water, the impulse the frog has to escape the danger never occurs, and in the end the frog can be boiled to death.”
“You making this stuff up?”
“No, scout’s honor. That’s the way the story goes. And regarding societal ills, well the path to destruction is often traveled very slowly. And when destruction hits, the society in question seems blind to the cause; though it is quite obvious to the outside observer. Often the failures aren’t associated with the seeds of destruction. When the dross is skimmed, it is met with incredulity; “how could this have happened”.”
“Are you by any chance drawing a parallel between extinction events and social ills?”
“Kinda, sorta; you damn well betcha. It happened in the bible all the time and people pass it off as fairytales. The CME wasn’t a fairytale was it?”
“No but do you really think it was the consequence of social ills?”
“No, no, no. . . . yes. Why, you ask; it matches. Just like with the blink comparator; if you overlay the biblical account of the Tower of Babel onto the social condition of the first two decades of the twenty first century, it does NOT blink; they are figuratively and literally the same disease. We believed that we could do anything we put our minds to and we spoke with one language via the internet. The same is true for the people of the time of the Tower of Babel. We were reaching for the sky. When the CME hit, it divided and humbled us. It even confused our pseudo language, and knocked us down a few pegs
Presently we are racing back to that same absurdity, in all haste. If we do not learn a social ethic that is in line with the Creator’s, he’ll snuff us again.
In metallurgy, the refinement of gold is accomplished by seven firings. Each firing has a different purpose; the dross varies, although the process remains about the same. Modern man has been through about seven firings or should I say potential extinction events. Could it be that the last extinction event was in fact related to his final step in refinement; the harvest rapture? Is he done with us or has he just begun setting a new pyre to burn off the dross of more ill doing? We can’t reason that in specific. Humanity can only hope that he will reach out yet again.”
“Well, what does he want from us. Why are we here?”
“Do you want the short answer or the long one?”
“Let’s try the short one. You can always add a little more salt.”
“Yes that’s right.” Martin was glad for the opportunity. “God knows that we’re at our best when we are otherly focused; that is, operating in love. It’s just like a choir. Everyone likes to sing but if they’re not singing from the same song sheet, it can sound pretty bad. So if we are willing to give up our individual control to a single leader, we sound best. That is all God wants from us. We will be at our best in that arrangement. People think that to give their lives to Jesus dilutes their enjoyment of what they have.”
“Isn’t that the way it is?”
“No, I don’t think so. Realize that our lives are a package. The package includes all our bad habits, addictions, our goofy attitudes, bad taste, lusts, the whole mess. He doesn’t require that we clean it up first. What he is really after is a personal relationship with us. Any other detail is a religious trapping. He says that he loves us as we are. He loves us in spite of who we think we are, or who or what we think we should be. The problem is that we identify with our baggage; he doesn’t. He identifies with the being that he created. He identifies first with our spirit; a victim of the sins of the flesh. He takes us in our corrupt condition and cleans us up, as our will allows. He quietly and gently prunes our character and dresses the wounds without a scar. He is faithful to give us a choice that was not accessible or even known to us prior; a choice that becomes within our power to make. We are given the strength to release the previously un-releasable temptations. Often the things that seemed to good to give up inexplicably fall out of favor with us. It is much like trying to put on your dirty clothes after a good hot bath; they stink more than we recall; they are no longer acceptable even to us. He cleans us up. Most of us can’t clean up the least problem in our lives. Oh, sometimes we can put on a
pretty good show but it often amounts to trading one neurotic behavior for another.
In reality, what he gives us with the salvation kit is not requirements but rather a free and will driven choice. In a not-so-extreme example, it is like the alcoholic that couldn’t say no to a drink. Suddenly he is given the choice. A choice that was previously non-existent. Strangely the choice isn’t ‘drink’ or ‘no drink’; instead it is ‘drink’ or ‘deliver-me-from-this-temptation, Jesus’. And Jesus is faithful to His promise to deliver us. The alcoholic is still an alcoholic, but he is now an alcoholic with a free will choice. It is the same for every need of deliverance; whether it is from drugs, food, selfishness or lust. The list boils down to one item and that item is pride.
I think that is why He commands us to love one another. It’s because the love that God gives us, displaces pride and makes our id point exclusively in the direction of creation. So, here’s the bottom-line; all He wants from us is love. That’s why we’re here. He loves us and we need only to reflect that love; that’s that image we are created to be.”
* * * * *
Chapter 23 – Country Road
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
Albert Einstein