Doc, what's it all about?
What's what all about?
Me. Life. What am I doing here?
You are sitting around in your car with part of your harem letting my delicious supper digest in your stomach thinking deep thoughts.
That's not what I mean (as if you didn't know), but you know everything there is to know, so you should be able to tell me something as simple as what life is or what happens to us when we die.
O.K., if you're really serious, I can be serious -- not often, but now and then, or at least now. -- pause for thought -- The answer is illusion.
Is what?
Illusion. The Jeff Williams sitting here panting at -- opps, I forget, I'm supposed to be serious -- talking with Lara, Anna, etc. is not the essential Jeff Williams. The apparent JW is a complex collection of organic molecules temporarily cooperating together to maintain a process that has been going on some 19 years and identified by your handsome physiognomy and awesome athletic ability.
I'm just apparent?
Is that a confession or a question? A parent, eh? Well the way you fool around I'm hardly surprised; do your folks know they're grandparents?
Doc, I should have known you couldn't be serious. besides, you were the one who used the word in the first place; stop stalling. What do you mean I'm apparent?
Sorry, old habits are the hardest to break besides you must admit we don't have too much of a history exchanging profundities with each other in the general run of conversation. Well, let's jump right in with both feet here -- the real, actual Jeff is a Jeff that exists in a realm, dimension, whatever you want to call it, that includes more than just space and time. this Jeff is able to use the apparent, a.k.a. biological, Jeff to express itself in the physical world, but when the process stops and these molecules we recognize as Jeff fall apart, the real Jeff, the important Jeff will still be as whole and imperishable as ever.
Doc, this sounds suspiciously like the soul they keep talking about in church; I didn't think scientists believed in that spirit stuff.
Illogical scientists may not, but it is certainly not scientific to deny something to which the scientific paradigm can't be applied. To say this another way, let us accept that the human mind is a rather recent product of evolution and is quite probably not the final word in biological organs capable of thinking. So there is no logical basis for judging what may or may not exist on the basis of what this imperfect instrument is able to determine is possible or impossible. In addition, the scientific method itself requires that the phenomena to which it can be applied be, in some way, objectively measurable, preferably predictably reproducible and able to be described in terms already mutually accepted. It would be unscientific to suppose that all possible phenomena meet these criteria, so to decide that the only phenomena you will accept as real are those to which science applies is equally unscientific.
So, what are you saying; that science is no good and we should all be religious freaks? Doc, why did you teach us all that stuff if it's no good?
No, no, science is very good at doing the things that it can validly be applied to; in fact, it is so good at what it does best, it has lured us into believing it can provide answers to everything. But when you examine those things in life that mean the most, in the final analysis you are faced with the possibility that science may not be capable of telling us anything of ultimate value. I don't anticipate, for example, that science will ever be able to explain fully why a seemingly rational and intelligent woman like my dear Cynthia would not only agree to marry someone like me, but, mirabile dictu, would then stay married to me for 30 odd (sometimes very odd!) years. Can science explain why you, who could be said to have achieved a somewhat less than distinguished record (not to put too fine a point on it) in advanced biology, should be one of my favorite students or why you should claim that your favorite teacher is a man who tormented you through 12 agonizing tests and 2 impossible finals? The subjective dimension of our lives hints of a world far more significant than the one we see and measure.
O.K., but if we can't prove this spiritual stuff why should we believe in it?
Well, I didn't say we couldn't prove it; in fact, we prove it the same way we prove anything -- by experiencing it. If you come to me and tell me that you have seen and talked to seven little green men from a UFO, I have no right to say that didn't happen. I might wonder what you had been sniffing or drinking or if you had been studying too hard (then again maybe I wouldn't worry too much about that one), but I couldn't deny that, for you, little green UFO astronauts had proven their existence -- you had experienced them.
All right, so I can't use science to decide about souls and stuff; let's get back to this so called real Jeff. What if I have never experienced this real Jeff. How do I know if this guy is still going to hang around after some great white whale is busy rearranging the little bits of me and my surf board?
Are you sure you have never experienced the real Jeff? It's more likely that you have never experienced anything but the real Jeff and have been living under the illusion that the apparent Jeff was doing the experiencing? We are aware of the things we expect to be aware of, the things that we are told we are being aware of. Events happen now and then that we don't anticipate and maybe they provide clues to this other realm of existence. For instance, have you ever met someone for the first time and found that you were immediately attracted in some way you couldn't explain, as if you had known them all your life -- a feeling of unusual compatibility and familiarity?
Yeah, I have, but what has that to do with the real me?
Non-objective things are a lot harder to picture than things in this world, but let me try an analogy with something more familiar. Think of this physical Jeff sitting here with his arm on my shoulder as a radio receiver tuned to the Jeff frequency and being the instrument through which anything that is broadcast over this band is able to be expressed. Without the physical Jeff, the world would not be aware that there was a Jeff frequency, but it would still be there broadcasting away. The actualizing Jeff, the informed Jeff, the source of Jeffness is the broadcast, not the receiver. So the fact that the receiver ages and falls apart really doesn't affect the real Jeff. In fact, if another receiver came along that could respond to nearly the same frequency, Jeffness or some portion thereof could once again be expressed in the perceptible world. Maybe those unexpected compatibilities we run into are hints of this more comprehensive realm, like cross talk between stations.
Not bad, Doc, not bad, but if this broadcast is, and has been, going on for a long time (forever?) in some really big mother realm of existence, why go to the trouble of being received just so my program can be heard in this little ass world you said was just apparent? And don't go getting cute about grand kids again.
Can this be the same Jeff who, as a freshman, thought it was such a great joke to put silly putty in Derk's hair? My, you have come a long way. Your question gets to the heart of the problem and points out the weakness of my analogy. All I can suggest is that there seems to be some way for we human receiving sets to change the nature of our broadcasting station so that what happens during all the time we are broadcasting here in this little ass world (to coin a phrase) as the expression of our more fundamental reality, somehow alters -- improves, enlarges, clarifies or limits, warps, obscures -- the nature of our existence in the other realm, the big mother realm in your colorful phrase. So to answer your original question, this is what it is all about: we are given opportunities in the world of space and time to be as true and complete an expression of our soul existence as possible. Then, probably mostly by interacting with the physical manifestations of other soul realities, we are able to grow in understanding and compassion thus becoming more and more a part of ultimate reality -- a part of what the relatively few religious freaks that know what they are talking about worship as God.
Awesome!
Exactly!
