Looking through my emails during a pause yesterday led me to something by Allen Watts that more or less confirmed the conclusions I was beginning to draw when reflecting on what is necessary and what is possible to create for a future life. I'll be writing more about that as it's a very eye-opening and fascinating subject, and project. But today I want to focus on a very important point and that point is very nicely presented by Allen Watts:
What Would You Do If You Were God?
I wonder, I wonder, what you would do if you had the power to dream at night, any dream you wanted to dream.
And you would of course be able to alter your time sense and slip, say, 75 years of subjective time into 8 hours sleep. You would, I suppose, start out by fulfilling all your wishes. You could design for yourself what would be the most ecstatic life. Love affairs, banquets, dancing girls, wonderful journeys, gardens, music beyond belief.
And then after a couple of months, of this sort of thing at 75 years a night, you'd be getting a little taste for something different. And you would move over to a more adventurous dimension. Where there were sudden dangers involved, and the thrill of dealing with dangers. And you could rescue princesses from dragons. And go on dangerous journeys. Make wonderful explosions, and blow them up. Eventually get into contests with enemies.
And after you'd done that for some time, you'd think up a new wrinkle. To forget that you were dreaming. So that you would think it was all for real. And to be, anxious about it. Because it would be so great when you woke up.
And then you'd say, 'Well, like children who dare each other on things. How far out could you get?' What could you take? What dimension of being lost, of abandonment of your power, what dimension of that could you stand?
You could ask yourself this 'cause you know you'd eventually wake up. And after you'd gone on doing this, you see, for some time, you'd suddenly find yourself sitting around in this room with all your personal involvements, problems, et cetera, talking with me.
How do you know that's not what you're doing? Could be? Because after all, what would you do if you were God? If you were, what there is, the Self. In 'The Upanishads', the basic text of Hinduism, one of them starts out saying, 'In the beginning was the Self.' and looking around it said 'I am.' And thus it is that everyone to this day, when asked 'Who is there?' says 'It is I.'
If you were, God, and in this sense that you knew everything, you would be bored.
Because if looking at it from another way, we push technology through its furthest possible development, and instead of a dial telephone on one's desk, a more complex system of buttons, and one touch would give you anything you wanted. Aladdin's Lamp. You'd eventually have to introduce a button labelled 'Surprise'.
Because all perfectly known futures, as I pointed out, are past. They have happened, virtually. The only true future is a surprise.
So if you were God, you would say to yourself, 'Man, get lost.'
Now I would modify a couple of things in this text. The first is the title, as there is no if about it and the if in the first paragraph is also superfluous because you already have the power to dream any dream you want to dream at night. That's what lucid dreaming is all about. And if you've been following Neville for a while you know that this is also possible for our "awake" dreams. But although I'm not sure about packing in 75 years into one night, the analogy is a good one.
Just starting to think about possibilities in terms of lifestyle and experiences rapidly bought up the question: "How long before I get tired of that?". When I thought about qualities I might like to express I wondered about what experiences might be required for me to have the experience of, for example, being courageous.
Now even if I could write a detailed 75-year+ long script, I would have to completely forget that I am its author and so there will always be unexpected things happening. Either because I consciously programmed them in minute detail in a previous life(?*) or because my sleeping partner has concocted them to achieve something I have predestined intentionally or not.
Everything that appears to happen to me is in reality happening for me and I chose to experience it for a reason (consciously or unconsciously) at some time.
When I realise that I am here to experience certain things, that my word will not return to me void, and remember that I can move out of a state if I don't like it, then I do not need to plan my days out in minute detail. When I script my intentions for a day or a weekend there may be some specific things but it's mostly "What a wonderful day after a perfect night's sleep!" Then as I go throughout the day, no matter what is happening, I remind myself that I've had a wonderful day, or whatever intention I've set, and go with the flow. When I do this problems appear and then resolve themselves, an intended outcome can appear to be in serious jeopardy and then, even if I have started to think about a plan B (which I rarely have any more) everything suddenly turns on a dime producing an even better outcome.
And at the end the day, I have had a wonderful and often interesting day. Sometimes there are things to revise but that in itself is a good thing too because it's what we're meant to be doing to exercise our talents and improve our imaginative skills.
It really is all good.
And so the question becomes:
"What are you doing with your powers?"
*At this stage it's not entirely clear for me whether it's just towards the end that we consciously create the next ride in the fairground or whether we have been doing it each time from the start. I tend to think that it's after having bumbled around unconsciously for long enough and getting "burned" often enough to push us in the right direction. Or in other words once we have gained enough experience and our intents completed.
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