Monday 6 August 2012

More beautiful than fiction

I identify very deeply with the late Philip K. Dick. One of the great reasons why I enjoy reading his work, is because I believe he was describing his own daily reality, concealed by only the most diaphanous veil of fiction. Time and again, I have experienced phenomena quite similar to concepts that Philip explored; ironically, they often made me think, You couldn’t make this shit up. Or if you did, nobody would believe you.

Philip, sadly, was said to have had a lot of trouble in comfortably assimilating his experiences into the context of his daily life. I am relieved to say that the same is not true of myself. Perhaps it is because of my high-functioning Asperger tendencies, but I delight in all the remarkable transflections of reality I witness as a matter of course.

I do not feel threatened by my experiences, many of which are by definition impossible, even though I know them to be real. I feel at home in being a part of all things, no matter how inexplicable, and I accept the non-physical realities of life as a natural part of the universe that I am privileged to be personally attuned to. I have been privy to transcendent visions of the highest order, and although I suppose I worked damn hard for them, it was a labour of love, and the difficulty of such labours is quickly forgotten.

This very entry is an example of how my non-standard approach to consciousness can yield so much joy and fulfilment and positivity. I was desperately stuck on a suitable subject to write about; I had a very clear idea of what qualities I wanted to explore, but I was lost as to what context these could take.

Upon meditating on the issue, I was presented with a suitable course of action almost immediately. I have the distinct feeling that I did not come up with it myself; instead, it felt as if I was interacting with a great, external repository of ideas, and I had submitted a formal request for a suitable direction. Within a matter of minutes, that request had been filled, and I had at my disposal a spectral wellspring of useful advice on how to proceed. From there, all I had to do was sculpt the information into some reasonably cohesive discourse that people would find useful and hopefully rewarding to read.

I am grateful and proud that it is so effortless for me to reach such an ethereal Library of Alexandria, and I personally believe this vast network of concepts and inspiration is just as easily accessible to all people. But then, irrespective of whether one frequents such an invisible, organic metropolis of wisdom, or simply browses the internet for their information high, or even visits an analogue library: in the Western world, we are spoilt out of our minds when it comes to gorging ourselves on the accumulated learning of others.

There are times, to be sure, when I feel as if I am cut off from the net, and at those times I bitterly curse my fate. Even as I am enduring such torments, though, I am embarrassed to be aware that it is my perspective at fault -- not the nature of the universe. I realise, even as I am in the throes of quite ghastly tribulations, that my indignation has much in common with the genuine distress and execration experienced by a child, for example, who has a tantrum when they are forbidden from eating nothing but apple sauce for dinner. And they really, really had their heart set on that apple sauce.

I believe the true nature of reality is far more complex than people could ever truly understand, in a comprehensive and rational sense. Therefore -- typically -- when people write imaginary narratives in an attempt to mimic real life, they are inevitably limited by their own incomplete understanding. Ironically, I think that this is part of the reason why fiction exists in the first place: it revises reality into a simplified equivalent that conforms to what people believe it should be like, as a reprieve from what it actually is.

I am thrilled that my own reality is filled with a richness that exceeds the parameters of ordinary fiction. Instead, I feel as if the unpredictabilities of my life were spawned by the imagination of the gods. That may be an amusing way to account for the sheer scale of my wonderment at being showered by all these mysterious nuances of existence, but it is also a suitable metaphor.

My great hope is that I can share with others a suitable path to an equally fulfilling reality, no matter how different the reality they choose may be to mine.

Whether or not you compare it to fiction, I believe you will consider it more beautiful than anything you could have predicted.

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