CHAPTER FOUR

Each One of Us


Each one of us had a beginning. In this beginning, we started our development with a small idea, built it up into an infinity, had this
infinity, this allness, look back upon itself and redefine itself in terms of its own image, each part of itself expressed individually as a small idea, sculpted exactly in its greater image, now a new idea in the universe. This is the process of creation, through interrelationship.


In interrelationship, our beginning goes back through our parents and their parents back to the beginning where the first interrelations combined in such a way as to form life. In this beginning, this allness, this image in time, became Man.

Our image connects us with our beginning in all directions. Physically, we are the materialization of the infinity of interrelationship at that point of reality that defines our body. Through the billions of years of life's evolution, through the parentage of our ancestry going back to the formation of first life, we are connected individually to all the forces and circumstances that have created each one of us to exist today. Through time, we have been fashioned painstakingly into the form of our present being; through space, we are connected at every moment of time to the infinite image in the universe that is materialized as the definition of our physical form. Physically, the properties that are our body resemble the properties of the universe that define all things. What distinguishes us is that we live.

It is a property of interrelationship that it can become greater than itself. After all the possible interrelations have been calculated and incorporated into totality, a new image appears. The totality takes on a new value which is the value of its total interrelations plus the value of these interrelations added back as a total image. The total image is then interrelated as a new factor of interrelationship, redefining itself through all of its parts into a new image. This process results in a creative force that, in effect, causes the totality to grow continuously, through time. With each growth is a redefinition of all things within the whole. When the redefinition has been completed, the process resumes. In this manner, it is possible for the universe to evolve continuously within itself reflections of its progressively more complex image. At some point, the image becomes complex enough to describe that value we call Life. As a new image, redefining  tself in reality as a living organism, in some distant part the universe changed again.

Change took time and through time the universe evolved. With each progressive evolution came a more complex redefinition of both the totality and its reality. The reality that first sustained the simple living organisms became more complex as it accommodated the existence of more complex organisms. Through interrelationship, evolution was as much a factor of the changes in the living organism as it was the reality that defined that organism. With each progressive change in the life form came a gradual redefinition from the now more complex, greater infinity. As the image of totality grew, the life forms that were that totality's most recent materializations grew with it. Each new evolution was a reflection of the newer value added within the matrix of infinity. In each new birth was added, however minutely, that new image. As reality redefined itself and the environment within which the life existed, it changed the organism to adapt itself within the new environment. At the limit, where the change itself is being defined in infinity, much is discarded in favor of that which is to remain and endure. In the end, when the compatibility between reality and the organism is assured, a new life form is born. 


The more complex the organism, the more complex the definitions of its environment. With each new evolution the interactions that exist between the living organism and its environment also grew in complexity until such time that the organism would need to register data defining its relationships to its reality. In some rudimentary manner, it began to develop the ability that would enable it to recall experiences, make it more independent of a perfect set of circumstances for survival, and to register this data in its being. At some point, life developed a mind.

The development was always bi-axial in space and time and always registered in the surviving organism. Where the change in evolution was incompatible between reality and the organism, the organism perished, if not immediately, through time. Where the compatibility existed, the organism endured within the matrix of its greater image. The successful organisms passed onto their offspring the elements of their compatibility with the universe. Much was possible, but not all proved feasible. With the survival of certain life forms, the universe grew again. What was stabilized at infinity passed on this definition to their progeny; what was unstable perished.

Each one of us is a descendant of such stable interrelationships. Passed down to us have been all the successful elements of our
evolution within the definitions of reality. These definitions have followed us in our development totally and infinitesimally; not a moment was lost nor an experience not registered in our being. Each one of us is the sum total of all the circumstances and experiences that have brought our being from its first living generation to the body from within which we are conscious now. In us registered not only all the characteristics that define our appearance as being human but also all the moments of reality, all the interrelations to infinity, that have brought us here into the present to where we are. We are what and where we are because of what and where was everything else through time. The universe grew with each new definition within itself until its total image created human. At infinity exists for each one of us, individually, a definition in terms of our total image that has materialized us through time into our present being. What is our definition at infinity? In part, it is that definition in us that has registered the data of our being; in part, we are our mind.

The mind is the most recent addition to reality. It is that value that has most recently enlarged the dimensions of totality and given it a still greater value. In addition to all the other values that had been amassed through time, the universe materialized in itself the mind. In us humans, the most recent arrivals in our planet's evolutionary development, has materialized the most recent addition to the totality image of our universe. Our mind is the most comprehensive image of infinity defining us in terms of itself. Individually, each one of us has a mind; at infinity, our mind is the most novel, the most complex image of its totality; for each one of us in terms of evolution, our mind is our greatest definition.

In our evolutionary past, when still unconscious, our reality was only slightly different from the realities of other species. If we are to consider that even animals are somewhat conscious, with their ability to like or dislike or to remember past actions that could help them plan an action in the near future, such as procuring food, then we have been somewhat conscious for a long time, even before we appeared as a human species. But it is doubtful that we were fully conscious beings, conscious of the self, until we could manipulate our consciousness to recall a past in order to construct a future, an awareness of the self and its ultimate death. As unconscious beings, we could not affect reality; we merely lived in it. Reality exerted an effect on us and we responded to it, learning as we went from each new stimuli to the next. Our mind was then no more than a mechanism for registering these events and for helping us respond to new stimuli in terms of what had been registered. It was more like a repository for ideas rather than their creator. New ideas were created but they were still entirely from outside. Evolution was still a very slow process, painstakingly registering in reality each new definition altering the organism's state of being as it changed at infinity. In time, evolution created a mind that could respond to the circumstances of its reality in terms of its own likes and dislikes; the mind could now send back its own definitions. Reality began to register change more quickly as it began to register a novel phenomenon within itself: independent thought. With each additional action and reaction became registered a more complex change growing at a greater rate. Each independent thought became a new value in reality, to infinity, and back, prodding the organism to change again, still faster. When came consciousness of the mind human, change became explosive.

For each one of us is represented at infinity a value that is our mind. The mind is the greatest manifestation of all the interrelationships evolved to the present. In our reality, we are the most advanced specie of our planet. We are conscious of the self and in that consciousness are communicating that awareness to all totality that is our universe. The image of that totality defining us is the image that is our mind, individually. If we could each look out into infinity from where we stand and see ourselves out there, we would look past the body and past the animism that is our living mechanism; we would look into that vast interrelationship that defines our mind. We are what and where we are because that is what and where is our mind.

That vast image of reality is not strange to us. In our mind, through time, had been registered all the definitions from reality that had been our history, individually, to the present. Until our mind became conscious, our history was still simply the effect of a universe forming itself; when we gained thought, we joined in with its development and it became a universe forming itself with us. The greater image of our reality, our universe is a definition that had defined our mind, thus, our universe is also the mind that thinks itself in the same way we think of it. Through the successful evolution of our species, our mechanisms are compatible: We think and we do and the universe thinks and does with us. As we are and do, so it is and does with us, as it has been from the dawn of our history. The fears and hopes, loves and hates, growth and failures, are all part of our past as living beings within our definitions in the universe. What we feel intently, singly, secretly, the innermost reaches of the self, are not unique to us; they already exist as properties of our universe. The universe already responds to all we offer; in its totality are all the characteristics that render us so human. Can it be more than that? We still do not know, but it is reaching us individually.

At birth, we are connected in all directions to the image that defines us in reality. Our interconnectedness through our parents and their parents' parents, all taken totally, has placed us exactly where we are, from birth to now. We are as we are. We can say: "I could have been other, but I am not; I am me. I could have been elsewhere, but I am not; I am here." The image that is the self always occupies its own reality, exactly as it is defined by that reality. In that reality are all the characteristics that are the mind as it is seen by its infinity.  The interconnectedness is complete; we live entirely within the circumstances that result from our definition in reality, if untouched.

But to be untouched is an unreality. We are touched at birth, of necessity. The definitions that were our being until birth changed the instant we became handled by another. At birth is for our definition a new beginning in which we are to occupy that space and time that had presented itself as our reality. Our identity had already been formed by the eons of time that had predated our arrival in this reality; we have already been defined by the vast interrelations that were to create our being, from the beginning of time. Once born, we are new and materialize a new identity of reality around us. As a child we already begin to exert influence on this reality with the demands of our mind. As we mature, these demands become more self conscious and more aware of their consequences on our reality. With a more conscious mind, we develop the ability to exert the self in our reality and thus effect change in it. Our reality takes on more of the influences of the self and rematerializes itself accordingly, in response to how that self is in relation to its identity at infinity. Depending upon how each thought and deed is received at infinity will result how reality will materialize in our environment in response to the self. Thus, the mind materializes its own reality, from birth, and the environment of its existence is always a reflection of itself.

There lies the connection between mind and being. We think and thus we are. At its simplest, with the mind still unconscious, this
relationship is in direct proportion to the stimuli from the mind's identity at infinity. Untouched, our thought and our being are equal
identities. When conscious, the relations become more complex, a greater interplay of forces between the mind as it is at the self and as it is at its greater identity. The relationship between our mind and being becomes more a communication between the mind and its materialization at infinity, its environment. Conscious, capable of creating thought, it is also capable of upsetting that delicate balance that exists in its real identity. When touched, an identity can become other than the self.

If the mind's expressions are real, they become accepted by reality; if false, they become rejected. If we seek increasing acceptance, then the universe thinks with us and the self grows within its greater environment into a still greater consciousness. If we continuously court rejection, we are frustrated into an existence less conscious and continuously more calloused. More conscious, the universe grows more conscious of us; more calloused, we become more hardened against its definitions of our reality, if we survive rejection. Ultimately, rejection could kill us.

Each one of us from the beginning of our evolution, and later from our beginning at birth, is both affected by and affects the identity that defines us at infinity. In that definition is recorded all that has contributed to our being and to our self awareness as conscious beings. We are the product of the universe's growth, its creation within itself; having a mind, conscious, we are now also contributors to this growth with our own creations. As we create, the universe creates with us, in its image. Untouched, each one of us is an image that is being created by the universe, out there.  In that image is the consciousness of our new identity. In our being, in our mind, from the dawn of our creation to now, at each moment of time, are the mechanisms that are compatible with our identity out there.

 

HABEAS MENTEM

California at Midnight, July 7, 1998.

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