In the center of an otherwise empty room stands an easel on which sits a newly finished painting. Beside the easel, a small worktable upon which are innumerable tubes of paint in various stages of apparent use. Brushes are scattered here and there, some very worn out and covered, likewise in paint. Some brushes are half submerged in a glass jar full of what smells like paint thinner. Before the easel, painting, and worktable stands a man admiring the newly completed work of art. Momentarily, a child joins the man; a boy of about eleven years who, likewise stands and stares up at the painting. There is a long silence as the two gaze at the painting, a masterwork of incredible detail and brilliant colour. The painting seems almost to change, the more one looks into it. It seems almost alive. “Magnificent, isn’t it?” says the man under his breath as he continues to stare. After some time has passed the boy looks up at the man and asks, “Who painted it?” The man rousing himself from apparent deep thought and reflection replies, “no one painted it.”
Someone must have painted it.
No, I’m afraid not. There’s no sign of any painter.
What about the painting?
What about the painting?
Isn’t the painting a sign of a painter?
Well, no, actually. The painting just became on it’s own. The painting simply is.
How can a painting paint itself? That’s silly.
No, that’s science. It isn’t as though it happened all at once. It took a very long time, you see. 13 billion years, I am told. The alternative is what’s silly.
I don’t see how the painting could just paint itself.
Well, isn’t it obvious? Look there. Do you see those brushes still wet with paint?
Clearly the paint on the canvas came from those brushes. Look there are the same colours….and there, do you see?
Well where did the paint on the brushes come from?
Don’t you see all of those tubes of paint? Look, some are half squeezed out. The paint on the brushes came from there. Any one can see that. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.
Where did the squeezed out tubes of paint come from then?
Why, the table that they’re sitting on, I expect.
How could they come from the table?
You ask a lot of questions, don’t you. I suppose that the table adapted to changes in this room over a long period of time and slowly changed into the tubes of paint, which in turn adapted to collectively contribute to the painting that we are both admiring now. It’s all right there. Quite an achievement. And all due to lust and danger. Creativity is based entirely on those two things. It is an entirely human endeavor.
If the table turned into the paint, why is there still a table there?
To hold up the brushes and the paint!
I don’t know…I still think somebody painted the painting.
Be careful. That’s sophistry, young man and verging on a dangerous belief system.
What’s sophistry?
A derogatory term used to describe arguments that cannot be explained within a system, arguments much like the one you are presently engaged in as there is clearly no sign of the so called “painter” that you seem so keen on presuming to exist. Every element in the painting is accounted for right here on the table. Any fool can see that and besides I cannot possibly conceive of any one person painting anything even close to the majesty of this great accident before us now. Why just look at the intricacies, the seamlessness of it all. Watch. Even as we speak, it is realizing itself! It appears to change as one looks into it! The moving image of changeless eternity, right here before our eyes. If there were a painter who could produce such magnificence, he would have to wield a mastery of the four elements that comprise the painting itself and are clearly at work within it right now. There is no such person and never has been.
Four elements?
Why, of course! Space, time, mass, and energy. The four pillars that sum up what you see before you, my boy! You seem to know very little about painting to be making such preposterous claims as you are! Painter indeed! Such notions are of the dark ages! I suppose next you’ll tell me that the painting isn’t flat. This painting is without a doubt the very vision that painters have foreseen throughout the history of painting, whether they knew what they were foreseeing or not. This must be the sum of the parts that have been gathered together bit by bit in bursts of realization by the great visionaries throughout all of history. Reality itself unfolding before our eyes. You should count yourself lucky. There are a great many before you who would have given their eyes for a glimpse of this.
It does make me think of some other paintings I’ve seen before.
Of course it does.
Or maybe the paintings I’ve seen before made me think of this.
That is quite enough of that, young man! I believe Blake’s work is down the hall if you are so inclined! Do you have any idea what you are saying? No, I think not. And even if you did, you would be assuming credit for something that cannot be realized unless collectively. Do not assume that you can just circumvent Alberti’s perspective, Newton’s mechanics, Kant’s arguments, Manet’s daring, Picasso’s vision, all of the great minds that have struggled to describe this anomaly before us and blurt out such ridiculous statements as you just have. Were you raised by wolves? Helped found Rome, I suppose.
Why collectively?
What’s that?
You said the painting was realized collectively.
Well, yes. Of course. In a way. It is all a matter of subjectivity. Do you know what that is?
Is it much like painting?
I suppose you might put it that way, actually. Subjectivity has to do with the idea that reality is not so fixed as it was once thought to be, but is subject to change due to one’s point of view. It is very difficult to wrap one’s head around. The great investigator, Albert Einstein…You’ve heard of him?
I think so.
Yes. Even he had a difficult time coming to terms with it.
Why?
Because, Einstein, brilliant as he was, developed a theory that could not be refuted, but was in itself a bit of a paradox. He said that what is real for one observer may just as easily be an illusion for another which means that there is really no frame of reference that can be considered constant aside from his theory itself. Do you understand?
You mean everything changes everywhere all at the same time no matter what?
Well, something like that.
That’s what this painting looks like to me. But that’s just me.
No, my boy, that’s everyone.
Not the painter.
Who?
Who made the painting. He knows what it looks like everywhere all at the same time because he painted it.
There you go with the painter again. I thought we were finished with such talk. Once and for all there is no painter. This painting is the grand sum of the collective vision that has marked all of history and nothing more. No one painted it. It just is and that is that.
Was it collected before it was here or was it here before it was collected?
You have a funny way of saying things, my boy. But that is precisely the question Einstein may have been getting at and not just Einstein, mind you. While Einstein was scratching out his theories, Picasso was painting them.
I’ve seen some of his paintings. They were brown.
Ah yes..and Braque.
No, Mostly brown with some grey.
What’s that..oh, no, no, not black, son, Braque, Picasso’s cubist comrade. His partner in light speed, if you will.
Light speed?
Why yes. Let me try to explain. You see, if a train were to leave a train station at 186,000 miles an hour and, well…it is a bit confusing. The colours would all turn brown, you see and the clock would remain the same but it would appear to be in front of the train when it is, in fact, behind and also flat. Yes, flat like Greenberg was always rambling about….You aren’t following are you?
You are talking at 186,000 miles an hour.
Well, yes I suppose so. Look, the point is this. Aside from light speed, there is no constant point of reference anywhere ever. Reality is the sum of its experience. There it is.
So reality is what we want it to be?
Some would say that it is as we collectively foresee it.
That sounds like magic!
The primitives certainly took it to be. Some might say that the primitives had a better look at it than did the Greeks. Have you heard of Aristotle?
Was Aristotle a Greek?
Yes. And it was he who developed the means of thinking that would allow Einstein the means to formulate as he did due to his use of syllogism. Syllogism is a way of thinking of things that allows the thinker to come to a conclusion. This allowed for people to communicate ideas about reality and prove things to be true and false due to Aristotle’s sequencing of time.
How could anything be true or false?
How’s that?
You said before that reality is the sum of it’s experience.
Yes?
Then everybody’s experience is true.
Yes, but there are certain truths that we must…
Who must?
That we must agree on to have any rational discourse regarding…
What if I disagree with you?
Well, that is your experience, however…
But there are only two of us here. How could we tell which one is the right one?
Well, I suppose there would be no right one. But that’s beside the..
Then there IS a painter!
Oh..not the painter again.
What if the painter came back? Then there’d be two of us against you. What if the painter said you didn’t exist? Then what?
Well, then the painter would be wrong, for here I am.
How do you know?
Cogito ergo sum.
What does that mean?
It means that you have driven me to quote Descartes! You should become a politician, you know. You could drive a Clinton to confession!
I’d rather be an artist. I like to make things.
Make things difficult for me, you mean.
I think you are making things difficult all by yourself.
You do, do you?
Yes.
And why do you think that?
Well, just having to make up the story about the painting having no painter seems pretty difficult to me.
Young man, I am not making up anything. I am echoing the opinions of a great many of our surest thinkers, all of whom have, no doubt done more thinking than you. Of that much I am certain. Look, I’m not saying there is no intention behind the painting. I’m simply trying to explain to you that this painting before us is the result of a consensus turned paradigm, which eventually, according to Whitehead, when conformed to reality becomes truth. It isn’t so much a matter of either your truth or my truth, but rather our truths that contributes to reality and thus this painting here.
I don’t see how our truth is alike at all.
Perhaps I should tell you about the particle and the wave. Perhaps that might help. For a long time scientists believed that light traveled in waves, that light had characteristics akin to that of waves. Then Einstein came along and began to claim that light travels in and behaves more like particles…. And like waves.
At the same time?
Well, that is my point. You see when the scientists who were trying to get to the bottom of this really began to look a light, they found that when they watched for it to behave like a wave, it behaved like a wave but when they watched for it to act like a particle it did just that. Now how can this be?
Maybe it was tricking them.
Light doesn’t know how to trick people.
It knows how to act like a wave when you’re looking and a particle when you’re not. You just said so.
No, I said that it acted like…Niels Bohr. He figured it out eventually.
Did he trick the light?
Not so much as let the light have it both ways.
So he let it be both.
Exactly.
Wasn’t it already?
Wasn’t it what?
Both.
Bravo! Exactly. You see? You’re catching up to the light.
I’d rather not. I don’t want to be flat and brown.
But you see my point, don’t you? It all comes back to that subjectivity that we were talking about earlier. And it doesn’t just apply to light. It applies to everything.
So everything can be both?
Everything perceivable.
What about what isn’t perceivable?
Let’s not get into duality.
Why not?
Because duality and the human condition have much to do with one another and I for one like many others of my ilk believe that the human condition can be overcome and will be if given a bit of guidance and a bit of a push here and there in the right direction.
What’s wrong with it?
The human condition? Nothing that we cannot overcome and that is all I care to say about it.
Is it tricking, like the particles and waves?
Not so much as it is undecided. That is why some of us must help show it what it is to be.
How do you know what it is to be?
Why, through those great visionaries, the artists who have foreseen what is to come and physicists, who describe the nature of what is coming. Like the waves and particles, the two are complimentary. While unalike, they are the same. Human nature, like wise is, while paradoxical and divisive in nature, It is knowledge that will heal the division, knowledge that we have slowly recovered with each conceptual shift throughout history. With each scientific advancement and significant work of art, we regain what was lost at Babel. Ushering in a New Age of light!
Babel?
The mythic event that tore our collective tower of knowledge to bits and divided mankind for millennia, yes. All of history has been of our agonizingly slow resumption of work on this mythic public monument to knowledge.
How can an event be mythic and historic?
Ah, now you’re catching on, young man. Perhaps a bit too quickly, in fact. Let’s just say that there was a bit of a misunderstanding created way back when between people that led to an inability to communicate correctly without the use of symbols. Language was rendered incomprehensible as human unity and communal determinism gave way to parochial suspicions and patriarchal religious systems, which have deterred the reconstruction of that great tower of our collective knowledge, Babel. The linear framework of language particularly found in Semitic cultures only served to contribute to this patriarchal framework that has been the source of much of the confusion and division between left-brain thinkers and right-brained foreseers. Much of the information that was lost at Babel has been, throughout history slowly and painstakingly reassembled by illuminated servants of the light who have passed it on from generation to generation through the use of symbols as opposed to linear lettering systems. It is the symbol, you see, that most resonates in the human psyche, both individually and collectively and it is through the use of symbols that artists and physicists, whether they are aware of it or not are at the forefront of expressing our humanist collective return to Goddess Reason while throwing off the shackles of blind faith in such arcane misadventures as belief in this painter that you insistently hold so dear, young man. Such fancies are divisive components of that patriarchal religious system that has suppressed the accumulation of knowledge and expression of universal mind throughout history and must be eliminated altogether if we are to realize the erection of our unifying Tower in the latticework of the space-time continuum and a return to a more serpentine cyclical understanding of the true nature of reality as was once held dear in the time of the gods. It was Prometheus that gave us fire and birthed the first of the physicists. It was Yahweh that shackled humanity to his ankle and He that kept our forefathers guessing in the dark. It was Yahweh that tore down Babel. But I’ve said too much, haven’t I? You haven’t the foggiest notion as to what I’m talking about have you? Well, no matter, never mind as they say.
Actually, I’m afraid I do.
What’s that? You do what?
Know what you’re talking about, Leo.
You do? How do you know my name? Do I know your father?
I don’t have a father, Leo. Do you mind if I paint a bit while we talk. Sit down, please.
Where did this chair come from?
The floor. It took a very long time.
My God.
Could have fooled me.
You painted this?
It’s a work in progress. You’re looking well, by the way. Any discomfort?
What do you mean?
I believe you were recently diagnosed with and cured of an ailment.
Still a bit foggy but mostly it’s cleared up, thank God.
You’re welcome.
I see…
I read your book, by the way.
Which one?
Art and Physics, I believe it was called.
Ah yes. What did you think? I’ve been told it was a bit drawn out.
I actually found it a short read and very enjoyable, as a matter of fact. I must confess, I came to appreciate the Fauves. Thank you for that.
You’re welcome.
Do you know, my mind is still made up about that Duchamp fellow.
Oh?
Yes. As it turns out he was in on the whole Black Dahlia disaster in 1947.
Really?
Yes, it was in reaction to surrealism. You hit the nail on the head with Freud but you missed the Minotaur. Duchamp knew how to keep his mouth shut, that’s for sure. But it came out in his later work.
I had no idea.
Leo, there were some things there I was wondering about and was hoping you could explain.
Such as?
Well for one thing, as we were just discussing, I found it curious that you opened your delightful book on page twenty and twenty one with a reference to the Tower of Babel as a work presently in progress. I believe your choice of words were, “Currently this work in progress is the creation of a global commonwealth. The worldwide community of artists and scientists is and has been at the forefront of this coalescence, offering perceptions of reality that erase linguistic and national boundaries. Reconciliation of the apparent differences between these two unique human languages, art and physics, is the next important step in developing our unified tower.” A bit illuminist, don’t you think, Leo? Novus Ordo Seclorum. You are aware, of course that the reason for the scattering and confusion at Babel was partially due to what they were building that tower for?
I was referring to reconciliation between the language of art and physics, there, I believe.
I thought the book was about novelty.
Well, it is, among other things…it’s about certain artists who’ve demonstrated forsight…
And yet, in the book you claim not to have such foresight.
I am only a surgeon recently turned writer. However, I like to think of myself as a synthesizer. I see patterns. I made myself clear that I am not a physicist nor am I an artist and besides, there was the disclaimer at the beginning. I even quoted Blake. You should appreciate that.
Blake is a nutter. We both know that. Just yesterday he painted some of the bricks of one of the main drags gold.
Aren’t they gold already?
Exactly. It took an eternity to figure out which bricks were painted and which were not.
You’re putting me on…
I AM? But you did seem very sure of yourself in claiming to have the foresight to know somehow what the next important step is in “developing our unifying Tower,” as you put it. May I ask, how you know that to be the next important step? And what was all that about the creation of a global commonwealth? If memory serves me correctly, every time the word commonwealth is thrown around with the word global, the word eugenics isn’t far behind and we get crowds out at the pearly gates. It can get to be a bit much for Peter, you know.
Not that your people haven’t done their share of killing.
My patriarchal people, yes, of course. There’s nothing I enjoy more than a crusade, Leo. That, and burning witches. As opposed to your right brained matriarchal belief systems whereby children are never sacrificed to the flame for a good crop next season. You must admit, Leo, forced globalization does tend to accompany the resurrection of those goddess cults you seem so fond of. I wouldn’t have taken you upon first read to be so Masonic. You’re very clever Leo.
I can assure you, I’ve no idea what you’re implicating me with.
You have to say that, I know. But then if you really don’t have the foggiest as to what I’m getting at, that would make you a hapless visionary and thus on the level with all of the heroes of your book, and thereby qualified to inform the reader of the next step in humanity’s collective march forward which is clever as well. Win, Win. But go on. You were about to say, “in my research.”
In my research I have found that throughout history, there have been a series of steps forward and backward in human evolution and they all seem to have two things in common: novelty, and religion. At the places where we took leaps forward, such as the renaissance, the enlightenment, the advent of television, the internet and say, the election of Obama…
Change, yes.
….we see huge advances forward in humanism and growth in the arts and expansion of collective knowledge. In the places where we fall backward, we see the ignorance, dark ages, evangelical reformation and religious war. In fact, I name war among the three things that will bring the human species to extinction. Overpopulation and the objectification of nature are the others.
Yes, the Berkeley interviews. I caught some of that. Harry Kreisler was a bit dull. You had him eating out of your hand. He liked you, Leo. I believe he might be gay.
So was Leonardo.
You’re working on a book about that I believe?
Yes. I name him the winner of the human species when it comes to personification of the resolution of the dualistic nature that came about due to the late development of the left side of the brain. The binary pair Wheeler was talking about was resolved in Leonardo, in my opinion, or as resolved as we’ve seen it.
Yes, “unified in the space-time continuum,” The reacquiring of this so-called knowledge that you claim was lost when I allegedly interfered with the Babel endeavor? Mythically speaking, of course.
Of course.
You named that “mythical” episode as something of a blow to humanity’s collective growth spurt. Very Masonic as well, by the way.
Ughhh..
Isn’t it strange that of all of the divisions that you name in your writings, you don’t mention good and evil aside from its adoption into Christian and Cartesian philosophy. You addressed the disposal of such a system as “a vital rung on the ladder of thought enabling us to reach a higher plateau?” I’m assuming you’re of the opinion that good and evil are an illusion as is the antiquated idea that the observer and observed are separate. I believe you named such paradigms as “impeding our climb.” Are you really convinced the division, or the perception of there being one, was on My account, or might it have been a split from the ground up, perhaps having to do with the origin of this knowledge to begin with? According to one tall tale I heard somewhere, it was the attainment of the knowledge of good and evil that caused humanity’s present state. Could it be that we agree on the problem, just not the solution? And furthermore, what makes you think that change, novel as it may be, is always a step toward a higher plateau?
Actually, I believe the human species is doomed as a race unless a change occurs. I’ve said so repeatedly.
I have to agree with you there, though, I have to tell you Leo, If knowledge is to be your saving grace you’d better get to building that Tower faster. You’ve only just penetrated space-time according to your writings and it’s getting nasty down there. The workers are getting restless. Speaking of writings, have you read much McKenna? You sound a lot like him. In fact you both show up in a lot of bibliographies together. I Googled it.
Tell me about him.
McKenna believes, as you do that evolution has a lot to do with the advent of novelty, though he seems a lot less baffled by the “apparent lack of evidence to support the existence of the mechanism for life forms’ response to change” than you do.
How do you mean?
Being that you make no room for exterior intelligent design, you proposed cosmic radiation in answer to Darwin’s shortcomings in explaining the hole in his theory. You then went on to describe a black hole in great detail replacing a theoretical black hole with a literal one while icing it all over with a bit of mythology for the esoteric crowd. It made for an interesting read, but I somehow came out still believing in My own existence. Is there a revised edition?
I hate you.
You must. But then, I expect this isn’t really a matter of hating Me. I’m guessing this all comes down to autonomy. It always does. It did at Babel. You didn’t exactly disagree with Darwin either. Should the reader take that to mean that you only agree with Darwin up to that point or across the board and if so are you aware of Darwin’s Descent of Man? Tell me you jumped ship before that.
I didn’t quote Descent of Man.
Allow me: “Some naturalists have lately employed the term "sub-species" to designate forms which possess many of the characteristics of true species, but which hardly deserve so high a rank. Now if we reflect on the weighty arguments above given, for raising the races of man to the dignity of species, and the insuperable difficulties on the other side in defining them, it seems that the term "sub-species" might here be used with propriety. But from long habit the term "race" will perhaps always be employed. The choice of terms is only so far important in that it is desirable to use, as far as possible, the same terms for the same degrees of difference.”
That’s some memory.
There’s more. Google it.
Look, I am in no way a racist, nor do I in any way promote such views in my books.
I’m not saying you’re a racist, Leo. But you do seem keen on the idea that there is a gnosis that should be cultured for the survival of mankind and the book does tend to champion those who have attained, to a higher degree than the rest, an understanding of one or the other or, in Leonardo’s somewhat exclusive case, both of the coordinates space and time. I was under the impression that there was in humanity, a flaw, based on your naming the human species doomed unless knowledge is increased in these areas. If you count Darwinian evolution a part of your world view, you must make room for some doom, even if it be for the, shall we say, “less fortunate” sub species who can’t keep up with the illumined elite in realizing the next phase collectively. Could that be your out when the light speed colored excrement hits the flattened motionless fan and it comes time to close the ark?
Well, I reconcile such evolutionary oversights with mind, the compliment of universe. That was what the book was about; the foresight of visionary artists in reaction to changes in evolution. William James proposed the “continuum of cosmic consciousness” to be the unifying field through which this would be accomplished. I am not responsible for who does and does not climb aboard.
There you go again, counting me out of the equation. “Continuum of cosmic consciousness?” I really don’t care for that name, by the way.
Neither did the Catholic Church.
I’m not Catholic, Leo…But we digress…
But we digress; tell me how this McKenna resolved this theoretic black hole.
Seeding.
Oh, that. From where?
Don’t look at Me! I’m a lover. Not a seeder.
Of course not! Why would you interfere with something you’ve already created? God forbid!
No, actually, I do it all the time. People just write off miraculous intervention these days due to a growing understanding of the means used. Even manna from heaven is now conceivable as you mentioned, though the energy required is that of stars and stars. Every miracle is natural, all the way up to the Most High. It is a nice write off, anyway, this seeding theory, if you’re trying to do away with a pesky God and such accountabilities as tend to accompany such Monotheist creation “myths.” Seeding also clears up that annoying missing link problem. It’s been suggested by others, seeding; Dawkins even, though few have committed to it as it only brings one back to the original question.
What’s that?
Where did the Paint come from?
Oh, that. Well from the tubes of course…
You’re a tough nut to crack Leo. A zeitgeist, you said in Art and Physics, would be a space and time manifestation of a universal mind. You cited “occurrences that cannot be explained by the rules of causality” as evidence for such an entities’ existence. Spiritus Mundi, you called it. You are quite the esoteric acrobat. McKenna, like most environmentalists liked the Gaean mind idea, with a little push from the aliens, naturally. You’re an advocate of little pushes, aren’t you?
Well, I certainly take no part in “aliens from outer space advancing evolution” theories. Ridiculous. Humanity alone can save itself.
Or the best of it. And are you so sure? Like McKenna, you do seem to favor Goddess worship, which does involve worship of natural forces, not to mention little miss “Reason,” of the French Revolution. She’s been named other things, as I’m sure you’re aware.
Has she?
Oh, come on Leo, You’re well versed in this. You wrote an entire book about it.
I hardly see how crackpot “aliens from outer space” theories have anything to do with right brained dominated thought, which is what I was actually referring to in my Goddess writing.
Do you remember that Dishwalla song? “Counting Blue Cars,” I believe it was called.
Uggh. I hated that song.
It was terrible. Of all the goddess bands, I’ll take The Doors any day. Dionysus.
Dionysus wasn’t a goddess.
He was a bit light in the loafers, though and according to your book, of the right brained ilk. But you do concede that you acknowledge the existence of higher dimensions, at least one of which involves the directed extension of collective human mind into space. You yourself said, “the evolution of life forms on earth seems to move in the direction of organisms that are increasingly cognizant of the sub dimensions of space and time.” In so saying you are clearly defining growth to be synonymous with a push toward something that already exists, that being among other things the coordinates space and time which you cited as pre existing in the environment. If this were true, then wouldn’t you agree that space-time must pre-exist as well and thus alleged evolutionary growth is in the direction of a pre existing reality?
Of course. I said so Art and Physics.
Page 404 and 405, I know. Now Leo, if you recall, earlier in our conversation, you spoke about subjectivity as playing an enormous role in collective experience. Observations about reality are observer dependant and a constant universal present moment does not exist. You cited these in your book as principles lain down by visionary artists at the turn of the 20th century and described by Einstein in his special theory of relativity. This, shift in consciousness, you said later on became grudgingly admitted as an actual component in the very frame work of reality itself, which is another way of saying that if a tree falls in a forest and all of that. But Leo, if reality is entirely subjective and at least partially dependent on a viewer to exist, how can life forms evolve toward anything at all?
I don’t follow.
Exactly. There is nothing to follow, Leo. If the coordinates of space and time are shaped entirely by the experience of the observer, then they are essentially a byproduct of mankind’s warped sense of perspective or accumulative description of what was lost and must be regained. Therefore, space-time must be as well, however visionary that observer may be. And it is space-time that you are proposing houses the universal mind lattice that humanity’s tower of knowledge must grow through by way of brain lateralization and resolution of the coordinates, space and time thus healing every other polar opposite perceived by a hemispheric man. You are, in effect citing the visionary artist to be the driver rather than the foreseer, as, really, Leo, if man’s at the top of the evolutionary chart, there’s nothing to foresee; foresight, of course being defined the byproduct of impersonal intention and indeterminate receptivity. It is a very clever way of putting humanity in the drivers seat. How frightening for the driver. Reinhardt was terrified, you know.
Rothko killed himself and he was into color.
Sad. I did enjoy The G.K. Chesterton quote. Hilarious. Have you read much of him?
I quoted him didn’t I?
In The New Unhappy Lords: An Exposure of Power Politics he wrote about “the existence of a conspiracy for the destruction of the traditional Western world as a prelude to shepherding mankind into a sheep’s pen run as a One World tyranny.” Is that a bit like a global commonwealth? Why are you pinching yourself?
I’m trying to wake up. I am having a very bad dream wherein I’ve been kidnapped by an eleven-year-old conspiracy theorist from space-time who is claiming to be God.
Oh, Leo, space-time isn’t even denting how high up this can go. And I’m no theorist. I’m just interested in you’re apparent determination to write Me off at every turn in your recovery of self. On page 354 and 355, for example, in describing the birth of stars which you claim are the “mechanism for all life form’s response to change” including man’s supposed evolution as we talked about earlier, you sidestep this issue by citing an “unseen organizing principle much like the ephemeral force of life” as somehow contributing to, dare I say “their creation.” Now, Leo, I want you to notice that the canvas I am presently painting must be there for my brush to apply paint….for this brush stroke to manifest here, and here, do you see?
Of course I can see.
There must be a table before the palette, a palette before the paint. And brushes before painting can even be considered and canvas before the paint can be applied, unless you want to paint on the floor.
What about Pollock?
He was drunk. You see my point, the evolutionary chain of events you describe could be considered a creative process by anyone with creativity in mind. and if the passing of time is truly subjective, then your billions of years really might as well be right now. And now. And now….at least from my point of view, which I can assure you is above space-time, which you predict is more present than the pairs space and time that lead up to it, assuming that is the direction of growth and beneficial change. You seem to idolize every aspect of Me but Myself. Now, Leo, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. This is what I am about to do. I am about to dip my brush in that spot of cerulean blue there on the palette to my left and apply the paint there to the upper left corner of the canvas, right up there at the very top. I promise, that’s what I’m going to do. Do you believe me?
I suppose.
You might as well. Humor me.
Alright then, I believe you.
What am I going to do?
You just told me.
You have to repeat it for it to work.
You’re going to dip your brush in the cerulean blue and apply it to the upper left corner of the canvas.
Alright then, now watch closely…and done.
Bravo.
There. Now, Leo, you are a prophet. Come here for a moment. I want you to take the clean brush that’s in the jar there, no, that one’s dirty, the other, yes. Take that brush and dip it into the same cerulean blue that I just used and do exactly as I just did.
In the same place?
The same. Good. There….and done.
How is that?
Close enough. Now you are a visionary artist. How do you feel?
Ridiculous.
So did Blake. Ok. One more. I want you to describe to Me as best you can me what just happened.
I get it. I get it.
Don’t you want to be a physicist? Alright, then. Never mind. My point is this, Leo, In discounting a creator, or anything above mankind at all you really open yourself up to whatever it is that comes your way from a place that you are only beginning to understand. Suppose just now I had told you to use pthalo blue.
Awful.
Actually, it can be used to create nice flesh tones if used ever so sparingly, but yes, it would have ruined the painting, though it’s not a stretch from that nice cerulean blue that you did use. Isn’t it strange how something so close to the truth can be so untrue? In making no room for anything but yourself in the grand scheme of things you exchange the wonder of how it works for the tedium of why it works while opening yourself up to any and all information true or false via visionary artists whose work can be corroborated with physicists who are really only scratching the surface of the nuts and bolts of reality itself. I am all for discovery and I believe much of your collective scratching is in the right direction, but if you’re scratching to find out why while rejecting altogether an outside intelligent intention you may as well not be scratching at all, unless you’re after autonomy, which as I mentioned earlier is at the bottom of all of this to begin with. And I do mean the bottom. Have you noticed what mankind pursues immediately following the establishment of power?
What?
Immortality. Autonomy. Look at the epic of Gilgamesh, for example.
That was a myth.
Really. I’ve heard otherwise. I’ve heard that Gilgamesh was the very same individual who was behind the Babel endeavor. But then, you called that a myth. Strange that it is named as having happened in a certain place, at a certain time by a certain someone who’s geneology is traced back to the survivor of a global catastrophe that is echoed in the annals of every culture’s ancient historic record the world over as is the building of this great tower, Babel which is considered a parable in your writing. At what point, Leo do you think a myth qualifies as an historic event? When it is written down? When there is fossil record or archaeological evidence? Strange that you associate the birth of stars with mythologies as well and yet assume their comings and goings a part of a reality that can be measured, documented and for all intents and purposes called real or “true.” Did you know that this Gilgamesh is actually named by any number of reputable historians? Many believe his name was Nimrod or Namr Ud also associated with Marduk and Ninurta of Sumarian and Akkadian fame. Nimrod was the father of Babylon, Uruk, and Ninevah among other early mesopetamian cities. He was a despotic ruler who demanded that he be worshipped as a god along with his supposed virgin queen Semiramis, who you know became Ninkharsag, Inanna, Isis, Oaster, Ishtar, Ashtarte, Venus, Gaea, Masonic Reason, Catholic Mary Queen of Heaven and of course Auguste Bertholdi’s Lady Liberty of New York. Bertholdi was a Mason, by the way.
It is an amazing sculpture, yes.
No, not aMazing, Leo.
Not that again..
It’s everywhere. Once you start noticing it…This Nimrod was obsessed with building a name for himself; immortality, autonomy. He built megalithic cities in what was once the antediluvian land of the gods. It is believed that it was he who was behind the stones at Baalbek. He was literally the first rock star. He was also one of the Nephilim as is mentioned in the Hebrew Genesis account and are echoed throughout many ancient records, a real bastard. Not unlike your Leonardo in that respect. A son of the sons of God, the Bene Ha Elohim. Your mythos resounds of events in your distant past, as you guessed, Leo. Might I suggest a past not so distant? Let’s just pretend for a moment that many of your collective human mythologies recall events rather than simply DNA star memory. Pretend your many religions share something other than just the same genetic dream pool. All claim visitation of gods from the sky or out of the earth. These alleged visitations are usually accompanied by sudden bursts in knowledge of the stars, technology, and building projects seemingly with long-term endurance in mind and a promise by the gods of return in the distant future.
I suppose I’m to believe in Santa Claus as well, then?
Yes. Why, you don’t? His name was Nicholas of Myra born AD 270. However unlike the “gods,” he didn’t fly around in the sky.
So we’re back to the aliens.
Not exactly, Leo. Earlier we talked about the folly of assuming man to be of the highest pecking order due to his having only scratched the surface of space-time. Suppose there are higher orders, Leo. Is it so unreasonable to assume there might be other intelligences outside of your experience of polarized space and time? You’ve made clear that you accept the vague notion of “continuum of cosmic consciousness.” Is it such a reach then to allow for the possibility of consciousnesses predating your existence?
I suppose we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.
How do you know you haven’t already? If your mythologies, like the Santa Claus myth, are rooted in actual events that have been propagated orally and in stone throughout history, it would appear to me that the bridge was crossed and burnt down millennia ago. If that is true, who’s to say that humanity isn’t unwittingly being led by the proverbial nose, which your book associates oddly enough with memory.
What does any of this have to do with Art and Physics?
Everything, especially if your reconciliation of the human problem is coming through the visionaries who in your humanistic Shangri la, are driving the collective party bus into space-time. What if these visionaries aren’t foreseeing anything? If there are such intelligences that predate and surpass what you admit is a fragmented human intelligence, who’s to say they or it has your best intention in mind? How do you know that the information your every visionary is receiving isn’t misleading? Is it a coincidence that these recycled polytheist ancient religions, when revived, are almost always accompanied by despotism and the rise of an empirical globalism?
Are you mad? What about the Catholic Church?
Leo, the Catholic Church, however well meaning, is little more than the absorption of fledgling Christianity into the Roman Pantheon, which only further proves my point. Every would-be conqueror needs a religion for the people. Constantine let it be a particle and a wave. Remember Nimrod? Isn’t it interesting that a despotic ruler and builder of cities be so open to his subjects becoming engaged in polytheist geocentric goddess worship? He set that up immediately as he consolidated humanity. Strange that over population has become such an issue? Furthermore does it seem out of the ordinary that the construction of the alleged tower was an effort to unite mankind in a collective effort to claim autonomy for itself? It would seem that goddess worship does not in anyway conflict with unabashed humanism, which when you get down to it, accompanies the advent of growth toward the “next plateau,” you spoke of in your account of human history. What humanism does not take into account is the problem of humanity to begin with. Utopian ideas are noble, but dismiss humanity as being inherently flawed. This flaw is easy to forget about when nationalism or a common goal is democratically agreed upon but the flaw usually rears it’s head when those who are placed in power, democratically or not begin to act human and such issues as your population problem are addressed humanly. Perhaps this is why I am not exactly surprised to find that your thesis promotes unification through such endeavors as the birth of a global commonwealth while maintaining an impersonal universalist spirituality under the guise of a return to Goddess Reason, which, of course demands that the overpopulation problem be addressed through such programs as have been initiated in the past by likeminded “wise men” who have written endlessly about dealing with these problems with eugenics programs while promoting the imperative of doing away with Semitic patriarchal monotheist religions along with sections of the great unwashed or “sub species” as Darwin named them. Gaean worship is another way of putting the need for resolution of the second of your list of three problems, that being the objectification of the earth. The third is war, which a global commonwealth should take care of nicely, you believe?
We’ve discussed this.
I’m just curious, who is it that’s going to head up this commonwealth?
It will, of course, be democratic.
But in reanimating worship of the earth and dealing with overpopulation doesn’t that more or less require that humanity collectively declare war on itself? It seems to me that the only problem with “Mother Earth,” is people. I wonder who will “democratically” be volunteered to the pearly gates ahead of schedule? I should probably go ahead and overstaff. Better too many than not enough.
Well why don’t You do something then? If we are damned if we do or don’t what are we to do? Sit on our collective hands and hold our collective breath?
I have been doing something, Leo. In dismissing Me as a player in the game and the creator of the game itself for that matter, you’ve missed the name of the game altogether. I don’t think you’re a bad man Leonard, in fact I’m quite fond of you. I think you really want to help people. I don’t believe that humanity does what it does intending to be evil. Humanity is simply ill. And no doctor, or brain surgeon for that matter can cure the illness that humanity suffers. You are right in naming human perception divisive. Of all of earth’s creation, humanity is the only thing that doesn’t seem to be working right and furthermore, doesn’t know what it is. While I applaud your efforts to fix yourselves, the damage is irreparable as is proven by The Law, which is simply a description of what a human being would behave like were it experiencing reality as it truly is and indeed as you hope it will through the resolution of your hemispheres. You just seem to believe that either it was born that way, or I somehow did it to you because I’m no fun and wouldn’t let you build your sandcastle. I don’t make things broke, Leonard, but I can make things that can break themselves. That’s what free will is.
I didn’t choose to break myself.
I know you didn’t, Leonard, but humanity cannot be addressed individually nor, as your book brilliantly puts forward, can you grow, unless collectively. Unfortunately, the sickness you share grows with you and is passed on with every generation so that as Plato espoused, you cannot see. This spiritual blindness, or divisiveness in your perception of reality is used against you by intelligences that have mastery over the lower rungs of space-time and have dominated humanity since it’s origin. Their worship by different names throughout civilization has always accompanied humanity’s belief in it’s own divinity and subsequent autonomy as these intelligences seek the same for themselves. It is this autonomy or desire for it that is at the heart of all suffering that you wish to see healed.
Why would you allow for such suffering?
Again, free will.
If such suffering might potentially become of granting free will, why grant it at all.
Because I Love You and I want you to Love me back and there cannot be Love where there isn’t free will. If I created you without a choice, it wouldn’t really be Love at all, would it? Therefore there has to be an alternative. There has to be a choice, which brings us back to this painting before us. Do you know what this is a painting of, Leo?
Why don’t You just tell me.
This is your life, or most of it and it isn’t quite finished.
Come on, really? It’s much too beautiful to be my life.
Leonard, your life has been so beautiful in so many places. Just look down there at the bottom left. Do you know what that is?
The bright area by the red?
Yes, that is where you pioneered laparoscopic surgery. Those are all the lives that you saved.
What about the green up there?
That was the day your daughter, Tiffany was born.
How about the silver in the middle there?
The day you were born.
What about that black spot down there at the bottom?
That, Leonard, is May 11 2009.
That’s tomorrow.
That’s why I wanted to have this talk.
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