Cities of the Mind - Ciudades de la Mente

Imagine a tiny and self-sustaining city consisting of intelligent beings existing under a major waterfall. Inside that city is a tinier city with tinier inhabitants that is, itself, under a waterfall. This series of tiny cities and its inhabitants, under waterfalls, continues ad infinitum.





Imagine that our planetary civilization is, itself, a tiny and self-sustaining civilization inside a larger and self-sustaining galactic civilization. This series, of ever-larger cities and its inhabitants, continues ad infinitum.






Imagine una ciudad, minúscula e independiente económicamente, que consiste de seres inteligentes que existen debajo de una catarata principal. Dentro de esa ciudad existe una ciudad más minúscula aún con habitantes más minúsculos que está, sí misma, debajo de una catarata. Esta serie de ciudades minúsculas debajo de las cataratas, y de sus habitantes, continúa ad infinitum.





Imagínese que nuestra civilización planetaria es, sí misma, una civilización minúscula e independiente económicamente dentro de una civilización galáctica más grande e independiente económicamente. Esta serie de ciudades y de sus habitantes, siempre más grandes, continúa ad infinitum.

Da Vinci Code Sequel Is Published Posthumously

Among the possessions of the late author of the Da Vinci Code, Tan Vrown, was found an unpublished book, The Power of the Code. After careful analysis of the text, which had been written in code itself, using the Greek alphabet, but spelling out English words in reverse order, the book was published to equally astounding results.

The chief focus of the book is Ms. Sophie Neveu, herself, as well as her protectors, the Priory of Sion. This formidable force was able to coerce various religious groups into remaining anonymous and silent with the newfound power and information discovered in the previous book. As a result, both Mary Magdalene's descendant and the Priory of Sion came to amass an enormous fortune, and with it, enormous power. Great technological advances were patented by this Secret Force and thus, in a matter of decades, they were able to exert enormous influence and to control, virtually, the machines of business and civilization.

Only small groups, hiding in remote wilderness areas, were able to survive the compassionate arrogance of the Secret Force. While the majority of the world's civilization had become attuned and complacent with the new world order, the very agents that had originally carried out the demise of the author, continued to pursue their goals, albeit on a minor scale.

The ending of the book, which surprised followers of Tan Vrown and his coterie of well-wishers, was evidently a sign of the regrets the author was having, before his unforeseen demise, because of the negative effect the Da Vinci Code had affected on public morals and humanity's vision of itself.

So distasteful was the technocracy that the Secret Force had implemented that--before the final outrage had been committed: the rewriting of history to delete any mention of the purported ancestors of the Secret Force--the Perfect Realists and their one-time adversaries, the Futurists, invoked the ultimate solution to the world's problems. They were able to rediscover and access an ancient system of beliefs, known as Eighth-Day Futurism, www.perfectfuturo.com/writings/happiness.html, that would change the course of their technocratic world.

Disclaimer: The above posting is a work of faux-journalism. It is not the desire of the writer of this fictitious post that Mr. Vrown should now, or ever, suffer any actual terminal consequences for his book, The Power of the Code. The purpose of this piece is purely for its philosophical inferences or implications.

Theoretical concepts of Time

Thought experiments:

Standard Time: Normal functioning dimension, as we know it.

Speeded-up Time: Time travel towards the future.

Time in retrograde: Time travel towards the past.

Slowed-down Time: Time at a rate slower than normal.

Anti-Time: Abnormal dimension where life begins at death and ends at birth. Funerals would be positive events since they would signal the beginning of one's life. A person would get younger as Anti-Time progressed or, in this case, regressed, getting smaller with each year as the person lost knowledge and status and finally "completed" their life as two separate cells: ovum and spermatoza.

Non-Time: A universe or multiverse or continuum in which time, itself, does not exist, has never existed, or will ever or can ever exist. Such a universe is inconsistent with itself and perhaps can never exist, and so conceiving of what Non-Time would be like is a pointless exercise. Nevertheless, we will proceed with this conceit, to see where it might lead. It's hard to conceive of any dimension that is devoid of time, since time is the primordial dimension, existing even before length, width and depth/height. Perhaps Non-Time can exist, although existence--or in this case, anti-existence--would have a different meaning from anything we can conceive or imagine. Of course, by its odd nature, no one or nothing could exist in this "impossible" continuum, so it would be an empty dimension. Might hyperspace not be such a Non-Time dimension? If that were the case then, an advanced civilization could never visit hyperspace to facilitate interdimenisonal travel, because by visiting it, it would cease to experience time as it is used to experiencing: a dimension that marches inexorably forward, or backward in the case of reverse time travel, though there would be actual movement in both cases. Or would the advanced interdimensional traveler simply exist in the Non-Time continuum for as long as (s)he needed to, without incurring the passage of time and the aging that goes hand in hand with this life process? Perhaps once the traveller visited the Non-Time continuum, he or she could never leave, as in the case of a black hole. The difference from the latter case would be that the traveller could stay in that stasic though conscious state for a very long time, perhaps forever, doing or not doing, whatever tickled his or her fancy.

Also imagine the existence of one dimensional beings, 2 dimensional, three dimensional, 4 dimensional ones, and relate them to each time continuum.

11 Dimensions:

What would it be like existing in 10 or 11 dimensions: Imagine the beings & reality or various realities or continuums in each one?

Theoretical Visions or Variations of a Perfect World or City:

Visions of Heaven as it Might Be or as We'd Like it to Be

Alternate heavens and worlds and realties and dimensions

Living in, not 10 or 11 dimensions, but in multiples of each, in 20 or 22, in 30 or 33, ad infinitum.

Imagine a continuum in which only one geometrical object exits, let’s say a sphere, since it’s said that a sphere is a perfect shape. Imagine that sphere, however, as having no inside or outside. Like your geometrical intersecting planes or lines that never end, also imagine that sphere as never ending, as having always existed, not in one, but in an infinite amount of dimensions. Also imagine that sphere as having no matter or antimatter. Also imagine it as having no non-matter or exotic matter, either. It is neither visible nor invisible. It simply is, however difficult to understand what “existence” could possibly mean or be like for such a sphere. Additionally, the continuum is the sphere and the sphere is the continuum. There is nothing else.

"But these are merely metaphysical speculations and, like all metaphysical speculations, they have very little relevance to actual day-to-day life or existence.” (A paraphrase of Oscar Wilde from The Importance of Being Earnest.) Or is it really true that they cannot have, have never had, or will never have any relevance to actual day-to-day life or existence? After all, what is reality if not how we imagine our world or existence to be, or to have been or to someday be?

Three Potential Uses of Life or Time:

Humility produces generosity.
Generosity produces pure joy.
Pure joy produces endless possibilities.

Tan Vrown, Da Vinci Code author, Gone but Not Forgotten

Tan Vrown, author of the Da Vinci Code, was found dead in the hotel suite where he was staying. It was difficult to ascertain that it was, in fact, the famous author, as the room had been burned for hours. Found in the ashes of the room were torn and impaled copies of the paperback version of the novel. No hard cover editions were found. Notably, the presence of huge pools of animal blood found in the burned room, indicated that more than one person was responsible for the crime. No one person could have carried the huge amount of books or animal blood into the room. Neither could only one person have set such a blaze in such a short amount of time with so much blood present in the room. It was noted that the author himself had not been hurt in any way prior to the actual fire. Apparently he was asleep when the blaze took hold of the room.

While it came as no surprise to some religious groups that this sort of thing could have happened, in spite of no credible threats on record, some commented that for the author to have penned the novel in the first place, knowing the rage it would create in some offshoots of religious or pagan groups, was, in itself, a sort of death wish. Some viewed the act of writing the book as a date with destiny. Others viewed it as the beginning of the end of secularism in the western world. While still others merely laughed and took little notice of yet another writer who was threatened for writing a book of fiction. In this case, the threat was crystallized in the actual burning of the world-famous writer.

Outside the door to his hotel room, in a silver box lined in red velvet, was found a hard-cover version of the author’s earlier work, Angels and Demons, also a work of fiction. The book was missing each sixth page.

While no one has taken direct claim for the tragic demise of Mr. Vrown, it is rumored in Internet chat rooms, especially Myspace.com among high school teenagers and their admirers, that a previously unknown group of terrorists or pseudo-New Age religionists, known as the Perfect Realists, www.perfectfuturo.com/Eighth.html, were remotely involved with the idea that Mr. Vrown should meet his untimely end in this ritualistic manner.

Major world political and religious leaders have publicly condemned this senseless act and have vowed to cooperate with international agencies to track down the nature of this shadowy organization and its leaders.

While some conservative religionists have expressed sorrow for this cruel act of violence in response to what the author himself claimed, to a degree, was simply a work of entertainment, others were indignant that Mr. Vrown would venture to write such a potentially defamatory work about a major world religious figure, with the express purpose of either profiting financially or fulfilling his artistic vision of the famous events of the life in question.

Secularists were especially outraged that the author of a book of what, to them, was a person of limited importance in the long run, as far as long-range human history of the future was concerned, would meet such a useless death, when surely, future novels would have developed the major thesis of the Da Vinci Code further. Already, it was rumored that the worship of the divine feminine was spreading rapidly in remote areas of the globe, mostly in California and certain regions of Europe. This was regardless of the claims that the book’s understanding of what constituted authentic worship of the divine feminine was sadly misinformed.

It is hoped by major world leaders, whether educators, religionists or politicians, that greater respect and government protection be afforded to the artists of world culture, especially of western culture and its restrained visions of civilization and progress, in order to prevent this kind of artistic and human tragedy from repeating itself in the foreseeable future.

Disclaimer: The above is a work of faux-journalism. It is not the desire of the writer of this fictitious post that Mr. Vrown should now or ever suffer any actual terminal consequences for his book, The Da Vinci Code. The purpose of this piece is purely for its philosophical inferences or implications.

MarContinuo - Cities Beneath the Roads of Light

"And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. ... And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found." Revelation 16:18-20 KJV

The inhabitants of the double cities lived nearly perfect lives. They neither wondered, nor felt any need to explore their Endless Sea civilization. Occasionally there were indications that the Sea had a life of it's own and, no doubt, surprises, but this couldn't concern them. The Rulers of Light and their complex methods of living simply, kept them content as they planned, not voyages beneath their world, but rather to stars nearby.

With the roads of light the Rulers had also brought methods of traversing the stars, that were based on the quintessence of superstring theory, no longer a theory, but a reality that controlled their lives and futures.

Unknown to the beings of the double city was the nature of the civilizations that existed on the ocean floor. Three major races inhabited those cities. One were oxygen-breathing beings that produced their air synthetically from the water and plants that surrounded their world, within and without the translucent walls of their city.

The second city had beings that lived in structures that were both contained and freely exposed to the forces of water at the planet's floor. They were amphibian beings that were at home, both in and out of air-constrained structures. Their machines generated neutralizing forces that enabled them to withstand the forces at that incredible depth.

The third city's inhabitants were neither one thing nor the other. It was thought they were probably living in cities below the ocean floor and had elaborate portals that enabled them to obtain oxygen from the water which, it was imagined, they also either breathed as true amphibians, or extracted from the life giving water itself.

Those above-ground interracted with each other, and by consent, left the underground dwellers undisturbed, as the last group had never indicated they had a desire or need to contact anyone that might exist above their subterranean world.

After the Million Years ended with the approaching disintegration of this four-tiered world, the beings of each level would need to seek out the others and cooperate to leave their water world in search of a replacement, if possible, or separate on different worlds if such a duplicate planet could not be found.

Only two of MarContinuo's civilizations would leave intact. The other two would survive in some fashion or other. If it was not in a world beyond their own, then it would be in a time far in their own past.

Cities of the Distant Future

"And I saw, as it were, a sea of glass mingled with fire and them that ... stand on the sea of glass. ... " Revelation 15:2 KJV

The whole planet was covered in water except for the towering spires of the double city. Some thought it two cities, though in actual fact, the city was one long cylindrical structure that jutted out at both ends of the planet’s equator. The molten planet core was the regenerating power source of the impaled planet’s citizens.

Connecting the sister populations of the one structure were roads of transparent light that circled the globe. One band of light circled from north to south. One band of light bound the city from east to west. Each band of light penetrated each city as it transported the inhabitants of the plains of moving glass. It was these that had broken away from the city itself as the water and its peaceful light-displays beckoned the city dwellers.

At times when the inhabitants started their journeys along the corridors of light, some remembered when roads were made of sand-colored earth with towering iron structures that towered and curved inward down the roads of a different world. Only in their minds could they revert back in time and try to recall the exact order of the structures and their meanings. This knowledge came not consciously but when the mind was at peace and contemplating the endless roads of light and the cities of pure water and foam that graced the endless world. The ancient dwellers had called this world, Marcontinuo, or ContinuousSea. Though in that distant time, there were no roads of light, only of the simple, but agreeable earth that dirtied one’s feet, but became more endearing as one tried to wash it off and a glint of light lit up one’s feet through the night. Such was the wonder of that ancient yellow earth.

Many thought it was this natural element that had preserved the races of the planet through centuries of changes and natural upheavals in the seas and in the skies. The wise men said, however, that when the Rulers of Light arrived with their gift of the glowing roads, the yellow earth would not be useful and would need to be pushed gently into the sea to find, perhaps, another world and civilization to sustain and delight with its perplexing qualities of shimmering night phosphorescence.

Through the Future, Darkly

When the universe runs out of energy, trillions of years from now, only humanity's artificial intelligence (AI) entities escape in quantum size to another universe.

Programmed into the new beings that develop in the next or other universe is the following saying or ritual:

"I state that I perceive you as you also state that you perceive me though not because we each possess consciousness, but because our creators programmed us to state these words when encountering any other AI entity."

Though this is not true conscious survival of human consciousness into the next universe, it is better than nothing at all. Perhaps some other intelligent life form in that distant existence may very well encounter these neo-conscious descendants of humanity.

Might we ourselves not be imperfect, lesser, or incomplete, though equally unique, embodiments of a prior or greater entity or entities or consciousness? Might our pre-Big Bang ancestors have possessed greater abilities and states of being or consciousness than we possess today? In some ways, our distant ancestors are still with us for we are their descendants, in the same way that one exists genetically in one’s offspring and in their memories or inherited traditions and characteristics.

Sometimes we might be catching a faint glimmer of our ancestors who thrived trillions of years ago when we have rare perceptions of a more transcendent and trans-human awareness or reality in our everyday lives.

Try as we may, we can’t seem to shake the fact that we were part of a greater and more perfect entity or consciousness that thought it crucial that their existence and brilliance be preserved throughout, however many future universes could possibly exit and persist in existing by sheer will and ingenuity.

Might not that Entity still be with us now and continue being with us as long as matter or anti-matter continue to exist or re-exist for eons to come, ad infinitum?

Christian Women on the Verge of a Cosmic Meltdown, Part 1

(An alternate history, or mildly satirical story, for fans of the Man and, hopefully, of Pedro Almodovar. Thank you, Mr. A., for thinking up these timeless women, Christian or otherwise.)

Imagine, if you will, two women concerned not about the men in their lives, though that is important to them, but about the Man in their lives. Though each woman has been actively engaged in a relationship of some sort with this unique man among men, something always seems to elude them. This , then, is the conversation they have one day when they've just found out that, unknown to each other, they had been trying to get to know this one-of-a-kind Man.

Pepa: You know, Candela, you could have told me what your obsession with him was. I always found it unnatural that you spent so many days upset when things didn't go the way you wanted it to go with him.
Candela: Darling Pepa, I didn't know how to tell you about this, um, fixation I had with this man. It truly felt like nothing I had felt before. The odd thing was that it was the first real relationship with a man that didn't involve a physical dimension, though, I soon realized that in some ways, it was more satisfying at times, than the best I had had with past boyfriends.
Pepa: I wanted someone like that more than you can imagine, especially when my last lover left me for his ex-wife's lawyer. Had it not been for that odd girl who lingered in my apartment after she woke up from her long Valium-induced dream, I probably would still be thinking about Juan, or Roman, or, see--how quickly I've forgotten him. Anyway, I'm thankful to Marisa that she told me about her chance encounter with this unique man after her boyfriend, well, your last boyfriend left her.

Note: This series has moved to its own blog:
http://vergeliving.blogspot.com/

The Future is Now - El Futuro es Ahora

Live each day as though it were not just another day, but
your first.

Viva cada día como si fuera, no otro día más, sino su primero.

www.PerfectFuturo.com

Value of Living Things - Valor de lo que Vive

Appreciate or respect all sentient or living beings, whether they once existed, currently exist or will exist one day.

Aprecie o respete todos los seres conscientes o vivos, si existieron una vez, existen actualmente o existirán un día.