Konsk: The Great Takeover of the Place.
29b. In Which Trueman Considers Various Explanations.
The Trueman Postulate. I.i.
While the I, the author, acknowledge the attempts of the physicist, David Bohm and pay some respect to the various, currently inadequate String theories, I hereby state this to be entirely my own work, having developed my Postulate over many years of profound and sustained concentration, to the detriment of my own health, against all the odds and despite exceedingly unhelpful criticism from so-called colleagues in the Scientific Endeavour and a complete lack of support from the primary funding bodies.
In the same way as Einstein's Theories resulted in a reappraisal of Reality, in that, prior to that other Genius, Time and Space were considered to be Absolutes, whereas the Speed of Light was seen as Relative and after Einstein, Time and Space were clearly shown to be Relative and the Speed of Light in fact a Constant, so too does my Postulate require a similarly radical reappraisal of Reality, as follows:
That the Previous and Current thinking that Energy and Matter preceded and supported the evolution of Consciousness is utterly erroneous and that following my Postulate, it will be most clear that the opposite is in fact the case, that Consciousness precedes and supports the appearance and evolution of Energy and Matter.1
Konsk: appendices. Arrogance and the Single Mind.
Baffled by the questions that arose, Trueman read more from the book. He laughed. He read for longer, laughed again and shook his head, then read for longer. As he read the studio faded leaving the book hovering brightly before his eyes, the pages turning by themselves as he reached the bottom of each one. He became tired such that he struggled to stay awake, finding himself reading the same sentence over and over.
Must stay awake, he thought, for they will be out there, waiting for me, watching. Perhaps logged in, observing my actions, what I access, trying to decide why I’m different. They will know, burst in, put me in a straitjacket or something, cart me off as an imposter, a madman. But I’m not, I’m not. Or am I?
It was a question that he asked himself occasionally, as part of what he considered to be his rigorous scientific method. It is of vital importance to turn from time to time the bright spotlight of analytical observation upon oneself, he would say to Dawn or Spicer when they came across him sitting in his darkened study, having become absorbed so completely in the operations of his own mind that he had forgotten to turn the lights on.
Now he considered his experiences since last reading from this mad book, examining each of the episodes in this future time in turn and considering their meaning or significance. As he progressed it all began to feel less and less real, more and more akin to a dream journey or an elaborate role playing game. The characters he had met now seemed laughably flat, stereotyped, like cyphers, as though they were but figments of his own imagination. And the names! Saxon what? Gargoyle? As if! He chuckled.
The chuckling, more like a death rattle in the new body's throat, died away as Trueman began to wonder what was really happening. During his experiences in this very altered world he had considered that he might be dreaming the whole thing, having just fallen asleep while reading Learner's book. Now, the experience of the virtual studio or workspace, so convincing in its every detail, suggested a further possibility, that the whole experience might be a virtual one, that he was in fact living and moving and experiencing his very being within some massively complex computer program.
Next, he began to consider that he had gone mad and was in fact suffering from a psychotic delusion, contracted from the dangerous madman, Learner, who had arrived at the Little Big Farm, many, many years ago. In his attempts to understand and cure Learner, he had unknowingly become infected by his patients world view. The process had been made much worse by the involvement of the suggestible Spicer who, after initial stubborn resistance, had undergone his own, sudden psychotic transformation and completely adopted Learner’s delusional perspective.
Then he himself, Trueman, the far sighted, clear thinker, had colluded with his patient, also taking on board the insane fantasy. He shook his head in despair. Was all this nonsense about a post-apocalyptic future just some bizarre fantasy he had invented in order to teach himself an important lesson, to bring him back to sanity? If that was so, then surely now, aware of his own madness and thus no longer psychotic, he had the opportunity to become fully sane, to experience reality as it was, not just as something he had made up in his head?
It was not unlike waking up, a stripping away of dream imagery and the more he thought about it, the faster he began to wake up. Yes, he was becoming lucid and waking out of a dream, a dream of madness. What had he been dreaming about? Something about a disastrous future, a planet called Earth. Now he could go back, to where he belonged, to sanity and reason.
He seemed to shed himself and the room as though falling through reality. As it became darker, he was aware that the INCO body was active, the ‘facial ganglia transmitting a flood of information. Yet he felt detached from it and continued to observe the proceedings, suspended in a vast space that now seemed to be penetrated by semi-translucent tubes or pipes in a mad tangle, some coiled and spiralling about themselves or each other, faintly coloured against the darkness, blue or green, yellow.
Within the tubes glowing motes of light travelled in both directions accompanied by soft tones like distant birds or bells. In some way separated both from himself and the experience, there was the feeling that this was strangely familiar, had indeed occurred before, such that there was no fear or even concern, only mild interest and recognition. Thus there was little surprise to observe that the INCO body had been replaced by a complex equation that was continually re-written in shining gold by a silver pointer.
He sighed. It was like a homecoming.
Thanks for reading. Please feel free to comment or make suggestions- there are far more possible explanations for reality… Hwyl! Chris.
Trueman had fallen into a familiar trap in thinking that just because he had thought of something that was new to him, it had never been thought of before. Even by 1984 these concepts had been and were being explored, notably by Bertrand Russell and the physicist Arthur Eddington. Of course, various spiritual traditions had explored this concept in great detail several thousand years previously.