When you go into the spirit realm, the first thing you notice is how still everything is. It's like a great virtual reality experience where you can look around in all directions but everything is on pause. Nothing is moving.
The second thing you notice is that all matter is made of light. You can see right through everything, and even inside solid objects. You can see the pocket change and wire springs in your couch. You can see your neighbor next door sitting on the couch. And it’s weird, because things aren’t translucent. They’re solid colors, but you can see through them, inside them. It’s confusing until you realize you’re not actually seeing those things. It’s more like you’re realizing them somehow. I’m not sure if that makes sense.
You’re not looking at things. You’re just sort of turning your focus upon them in this weird decision cascade.
But nothing is moving. Why not?
"You have to look sideways," the guide says from your right. You didn’t even realize he was there. Except you did. You just weren’t focused on him until he spoke. But now he’s there. Except he’s not because he’s not a solid object like the floors and walls and furniture. He’s just sort of there. Sort of like a thought is just sort of there, except he’s not disappearing like a thought. He’s staring at you.
“What?” you say. But it’s not really talking anymore than seeing things around you is looking. You just sort of wanted that word to exist and it did. It’s not like thinking. Thinking is automatic, not even really in your control. Speaking in the spirit realm is a decision that a thought should exist, out loud.
“If you want to see things move,” he says, “you have to look sideways.”
“How did you know I was thinking about that?”
He shrugs. “How are you hearing this right now?”
“Are all my thoughts out loud?”
“No. But they’re obvious.”
You decide to look sideways. You look to the north, because that's left of you. You see that there's a spare tire and a magazine in the car the back lane. The driver is scratching his nose. There’s a parking ticket in his shirt pocket.
But it's as still as a paused movie.
"No. Not sideways that way. The other sideways."
So you look right. South of you, you see a woman walking a dog in the street out front. But paused. You can see the dog's lunch in his belly. You can see the woman has cancer lumps in her lungs.
"No," the guide says. "Sideways."
He turns your head in a direction you didn't realize was there. Not north, south, east, west, up or down. Sideways. You’re not really looking in a direction, after all. Your focus is cascading through decisions you’re making. He just sort of adjusted that focus.
Suddenly, the world starts moving. But backwards. The dog's feet move in reverse and now the woman is leading him back the way they came in a weird moonwalking step. Her hair bounces weirdly, like the ends of it are pulling the strands instead of the other way around. They go back around the corner at the end of the block and all the way down the street. Cars are driving in reverse too. Birds are heading tail-first, back into the wind.
But now you're looking at everything that happened five minutes ago. And it won't stop.
"How do I get back?" you ask.
"You are back," the guide says. "You haven't gone anywhere."
But everything is still moving in reverse and now you're looking at the world as it was ten minutes ago. Somehow, you can still see that woman and her dog, all the way down the street. The guide sees your confusion and simply turns your head back from looking sideways. Not that sideways. The other sideways.
"That was... the past?" you ask.
"No. It was just sideways."
"But I was looking at things that happened ten minutes ago."
"Except you were still right here in the now "
"I don't get it."
"What's not to get? Time is a notional concept. You can look east literally forever and see things in that direction. But you're still standing right here. And you can look sideways and see things that happened ago. But you're still right now."
"What do you mean, ago? You missed a word."
"Ago is the best word. Ten seconds ago and ten years ago are the same thing when you haven't moved from now. So you just call it ago."
"Oh. Well what's the future called?"
"Look sideways the other way."
You look right again. No. That's not right. Left doesn't work either.
He turns your head for you. Suddenly everything is moving. But now it's really weird. There are two of everything. No. Not just two. More than that. The woman walking the dog blurs at first and then seems to have four legs. The dog has eight after a slight tug that only one of the copies of that woman apparently gave the leash.
"I'm seeing double what's wrong?"
"Keep watching. You'll figure it out."
The woman gets to the end of the block and suddenly explodes. Except she didn't explode. She just sort of turned into six different people. One went left. One went right. One went across the street. One turned around and went back the way she came. Two stood still, but looked in different directions.
You release a dismayed groan trying to follow all the branches of paths the woman took at once.
"You have to pick one," the guide says.
"I'm trying. I can't."
"Stop looking at everything and just make a choice."
You choose the woman who turned back the way she came. The others disappear. But now she's splitting in two again. One walks slow. One walks faster, like she realized she has to get home as soon as possible.
And then she splits again, and again.
"Pick one."
"It's too confusing. She keeps splitting."
"Yes. She's making choices. We all do it."
"But in the non-spirit world there's only one path to the future. It's like watching a movie. One reality as you go forward."
The guide laughed, like you told a silly kids’ joke.
"What you think is that one Future is simply the Now that particular brain has chosen. The future is actually branches like you're seeing when you look at the ifs."
"The ifs?"
"They're like the ago, except the other way. It's hard to explain. If she turns left you're in that reality. If she turns right, it's another reality. Brains can only focus on one reality. They can imagine the ifs, but they can’t go there until they make a choice. So they really have to make good choices."
“So there’s one past, but many futures?”
“No. There are many realities. All parallel.”
“I don’t get it. When you look sideways, at the ago, as you call it. There’s only one reality. But the ifs are… well, there’s so many!”
“Because you’re merely looking. In the past, you see the reality that led up to this point. But the future is all potentials, until you pick one.”
“Like making a wish?”
“Was it a wish when you picked which woman and dog to follow?”
“No. I just decided. It was a decision.”
“Yes. But it was actually more of a focus.”
"So there are... eight directions to look in? Up, down, north, east, south, west. That’s six. And then ifs and agos. That’s eight."
"There's also the bigs and smalls. You can look down into the very stuff that makes up atoms. And you can look at the entire universe all at once. But it's very confusing because you see everything everywhere."
"That's another sideways?"
"It's more of a forward and back. But not really that. It’s hard to explain with words. You have to just look there."
He pulled my head backward a very slight bit and suddenly I could see the entire neighborhood. And I mean everything! It wasn’t like zooming out with a camera and being far away. It was just... more things all of it where I was. Everything in the entire neighborhood. I nearly screamed.
"Stop!" I yelled in a panic. "It's too much!"
He nudged my head forward, sort of slapping me back into seeing only the immediate surroundings.
“What the holy heck was all that!?” I said.
“You are consciousness. It’s just another way of looking at things. It’s just another kind of focus.”
“But it was so many things! How can you ever…?”
"It was difficult because you're used to being only one consciousness and focusing on only a few things."
"That perspective is always there, all the time?"
He nodded. "And like looking east and seeing everything east. You can just look bigger and see more things, until you see every thing."
“And the smalls work the same way? You become a human microscope?”
“Look,” he said.
“Which way? I don’t know how to...”
He nudged my head forward, except not forward. It was like he just moved my focus onto a very tiny part of the wall in front of me. I could see what looked like vast, endless mountain ranges, and I was confused until I realized I was looking at the paint on the wall. A single tiny section of the wall had so many ridges and valleys it looked like a strange alien landscape.
Then he nudged me a little more and I could see beams of light hitting molecules of the paint. Some of the light hit the molecules and changed into heat with a weird vibrating shimmer. Others parts of the light simply reflected away, a single color instead of all of them.
When he nudged me even close, I saw the links between the different atoms of each molecule. In science class, they’re balls connected by sticks. But they’re not actually like that. They’re actually linked by energy fields. Sort of. The atoms had bubbles around them that weren’t actually bubbles. They were clouds of particles of energy… sort of. Except it was only a few particles that were everywhere at once. And these particles, these electrons were jumping back and forth between neighboring atoms so fast, the atoms couldn’t escape each other. They became a single thing somehow, by sharing electrons in a weird buzz of energy that was like a very fast forward barn dance. Atoms swapped electrons with other atoms so fast, they couldn’t not be connected.
And no wonder I could see through everything. Atoms were mostly empty space! The bubble-cloud-electron wall thing was see-through. It wasn’t even actually there. It was just energy. And the nucleus at the center was so tiny by comparison to the atom as a whole. It was like a fly at the center of a big spherical concert hall. Light mostly went through it all. But there was so much light, some of hit the atoms and changed to heat. Some of it hit and bounced off and eventually hit an eyeball somewhere. But the wall is so thick compared to an atom, and there were so many trillions of atoms in it, eventually all light hit something inside the wall. I guess that’s why you can’t see through walls in the non-spirit world, even though light goes right through atoms.
The guide pulled my head back to the normal space between the bigs and the smalls.
“Cool, huh?” he said.
“There’s so many atoms!” I said, overwhelmed with amazement. “But wait. How come the atoms were moving like that—the electrons, I mean—but everything else is paused?”
“Atoms are rebellious little twerps. They ignore time. That’s why those electrons manage to be everywhere at once. They always were and always will be… everywhere.”
“Oh...” I said, not really getting it.
“You can look right into the stuff that makes protons, too. But it’s mostly weird squiggly strings of energy. They just kind of twitch around, almost like bugs or something.’
“Like a lightning storm?”
“No. It’s not electricity. It’s the stuff electricity is made of. It’s just twitchy little strands of existence. It’s smaller than light, so you can’t even really see it. It just exists. Kinda boring, actually. It’s like watching fuzz on TV. At least atoms zip around and do stuff.”
Then I had a weird thought, as I glanced out at the next door neighbor sitting on his couch, not moving.
"Can you look at the bigs and the ifs at the same time? Like looking... northeast? Like, see the whole neighborhood all moving through their little explosions of choices or whatever? Can you look diagonally that way?"
"Diagonal isn't the right word for these concepts."
"But you know what I mean. Two directions at once. But not..."
"Yes. You can look big-if. But I don't recommend it. Only God can make sense of it. It's pretty nutty."
“So God does exist,” I said.
“Ultimate Consciousness is a thing, yes. It’s not a he. It’s not a she. It’s not even an it. It’s just consciousness that’s… There’s not even a word. Big doesn’t cover it. Everywhere doesn’t work either. Because space and time aren’t really...”
He trailed of, not out of his own confusion, but out of a profound inability to put these great concepts into words.
"So you're saying gender is not a thing here."
"When God created man, he created them in his own image. Male and female created he them, I believe the exact quote is."
"So he created men and women. Two genders."
"No. It means that the spirits were both male and female at the same time, both genders together. Male-and-female... created he... them."
"Then later he took the female part out and made a separate gender?" I asked.
"For physical procreation, yeah. You need the womb and the testicles and the other parts. And you need females to be attracted to males and vice versa, for the whole system to work. But originally, there were no genders. Adam was both he and she. It was refined later, but there's still no gender in the spirit world. This is why marriage lasts 'until death do us part', and not beyond, not here. We're all male and female combined, in our spirits, just like Ultimate Consciousness."
"God, you mean?"
"Use that word, if it helps."
“Ultimate Consciousness seems good enough of a term,” I said. “God rolls off the tongue a little better, though.”
“Except people associate that word with an old man on a throne. That’s not really what God is. There’s not even really a throne. That was just what he showed to the ancient people so that they could understand it.”
"So you're telling me that every spirit is both genders? Male and female together?"
"Yes. It makes all the inequality seem silly in that context. Men are literally repressing half of themselves when they keep women down and hold them back. But human brains are silly. When they're children, they get these things no problem. But the smarter they get, the dumber they get. And religious people who oppress and disrespect women would be very surprised and dismayed meeting God and feeling all that female power hitting them like a beautiful bomb."
"Would be?" I asked. "They don't meet God?"
"Brains don't. And that's where these silly judgements come from. Brains just die, and all their silly selfishness dies with them. Spirits knew the truth all along."
“Can you see God? Like is that one of the directions you can look in? Or is he at the top of the bigs or something?”
“There’s not really a place you can go, or a direction to look in. And it’s not that he’s like, everywhere and everything, like a rock or tree, or the laughter of a child. He is an actual being. But he’s just ultimate.”
“But people have seen him.”
“He shows himself to you.”
“But he’s not really a him?” I said.
“No. God is more of an it, I guess. But that word has bad connotations, too. Like he’s just an item on a shelf, or a weird twisted creature of some sort. It’s not like that. So pronouns are better for most people’s understanding. But they also lead to confusion. It's weird.”
"People say God is Love. Is that a better description of it?"
"Depends on your definition of Love. Some people think love is just a impulse, like the wind in a storm, blowing your soul this way and that. Some people think it's just a chemical reaction in a brain that makes them attracted to somebody. Some people think it's just some ethereal mystical force, like wishing upon a star or whatever."
"So what is it really?"
"It's good choices."
"Huh?"
"Well everything in the spirit world is choices, and focus, right?"
"Apparently."
"Well, when you choose good things, and focus on the best possible outcomes, that's love. There's not really any other way to explain it. But it's the whole reason why we have free will in the first place."
"So love is just... being nice to people?"
"No. It's good choices. Not every outcome is nice, or comfortable, or easy. Sometimes the best choices are incredibly painful, but ultimately lead to good outcomes. Human brains can't grasp these concepts because there's a big part of the brain that wants to be selfish, so you don't die and avoid pain and all that. But love is the opposite of selfishness."
"Thinking about others instead of yourself," I said.
"No. It's thinking about others as well as yourself. You matter, too. You are worthy of love and good things, too, just like everybody else. But selfishness decides that you're more important than everybody else."
"But doesn't that mean love should make you less important than others?"
"Love makes everybody equal. The stars are endless. You can't count them all. But if one part of the sky had no stars, the picture would be incomplete. This is why everybody matters. We were all created. We are all needed. We are all beautiful."
“Hey!” I said, suddenly excited. “Are there people on other planets?”
“People?” he said with a laugh. “Not like you understand it.”
“So slimy space slugs with eyes on their hands or whatever?”
“Different intelligences have arisen in different forms according to the circumstances on their planets. Where gravity is heavy, their bodies are different than somewhere with less gravity. They have to be. And to get food… well, it’s just different. If it’s any consolation, your body is just as weird and creepy to them. But it’s all consciousness on the inside. Same as you and me.”
“But are they killing each other with weapons and pollution and slavery and stuff?”
“Some are. Depends on the circumstances of their evolution. How tough is survival? Well, when there’s more competition, creatures evolve to be more… evil, if that concept applies. Selfish may be a better word. But when selfishness becomes ingrained right into a society, then it’s evil, I guess. Human beings have ego that makes them make slaves of other men. They have to decide that they are more worthy of rights and freedoms than the other guy, for arbitrary reasons. They developed that ego out of sheer survival over the millions of years. It’s a long story.”
“But is it objectively evil? These ego hierarchies?”
“It’s just stupid, honestly. How much more could you get done if you all worked together instead of dividing people up and assigning ranks of worthiness and unworthiness?”
“But we’ll eventually evolve to outgrow that stupidity?”
“There are infinite ifs.”
“You’re saying it’s a choice we can make?”
“You think it’s not?”
"Love is just good choices, I guess."
Everything was still frozen the lady was still out front with her dog. It was still that same now. I was going to ask if you can jump into the time stream in the spirit world, where everything is moving forward like normal. The guide seemed to anticipate my question.
“If you move over there to the doorway, it's a new perspective on this same moment. But you’re still in the same now. And if you move sideways to the agos, it's a new perspective but from a different moment in the past. It’s all about perspective."
"But if I move into the past, will I forget this now, this future perspective?"
"Do you forget the living room if you move to the kitchen? No. You can look over and see it."
"But this now will be a blurry future if I look at it from the past, with all kinds of double vision."
"Ifs are very cool."
"Scary."
"No. Cool. You can go backward into the ago of any if and make a new choice. Time is different here."
“That doesn’t make any sense at all,” I told him.
“It makes perfect sense. You’re just used to using those words differently. If you walk down a trail and come to a fork in the road. You can go left, walk for a while, and then later you can come back and go right. Simple.”
"You can do that in reality," I said.
"Which reality?"
"I mean the non-spirit world."
"No. Not at all. Not with time. Brains are small things, narrow things. They can't even see through walls never mind time. Once they commit to a focus, they’re stuck in it. That’s their new reality. And people focus on such terrible things.”
"So how do I move forward?" I asked, changing the subject.
"Which forward? East, ifs, or smalls?"
"Let's start with east."
He gave me a little push and I simply moved forward. I went through the wall and into the kitchen. Then I was outside my house. Then I was in the neighbor's house.
"How do I stop?" I called back to him. Except I didn’t need to yell. It wasn’t like words were actually made of sounds here.
"Just stop. It's like looking except with motion instead of view. You just will it. "
I thought about stopping. But I didn't stop. I was in the next house over now.
"You are consciousness. Just decide to stop. Don't merely imagine stopping."
I stopped.
"Oh."
"Now come back."
I decided to move back to my living room. But it was weird. Instead of drifting back I was instantly there, like teleporting in Star Trek, except more like I Dream of Jeannie. Except without the blink.
"Whoa!" I said.
"You are consciousness. You don't need to make your way over to where you want to go. Time works differently here."
“Space you mean.”
“No. It’s time. It doesn’t exist. So you didn’t have to move from here to here to here to here to here, step by step, moment by moment. You just moved.”
“I’m so confused.”
“Just remember, you’re consciousness, not a body. Everything makes sense that way.”
“Because none of this is even real?”
“It’s more real than your narrow experience trapped in your mind. You don’t have to make your way from there to here because you’re not a body that has to move. You’re awareness. Just be here, and you’re here.”
"That is very cool."
But then I saw myself lying on the couch.
"Is that... me?"
"No," the guide said. "It's your body."
"I'm not my body?"
"You are awareness. Forget about 'I think, therefore I am'. You don't need to think to be aware. Awareness just is. You could sit here, forever just looking around, being aware of the universe, and never thinking thoughts. You still exist, right?"
"Yes. It's very quiet, without my brain constantly nattering."
"Brains are just doing their job. Trying to avoid pain and death. They have to over-examine everything to make sure they can stay safe in all scenarios."
"It sure gets annoying. All that doubt and worry and anxiety about everything all day everyday, and even in your sleep."
"It's not you that's annoyed. It's your brain being annoyed by itself, because it's own anxiety is another kind of pain. You, the true you, the spiritual you, are just awareness."
"And male and female combined. And good choices."
"Hopefully."
“Wait,” I said. “Am I… dead?”
“Look at your brain.”
I looked, and I saw what looked like a little storm of electrical activity inside my head. It almost looked like the frantic, buzzy connections of the electrons in the molecules. Except all the little zaps of energy were frozen, like a paused movie, just like everything else.
“Looks like my brain is doing something. I must be alive.”
“Dead people’s brains don’t put on that light show. Well, not unless you lean in to the molecular level.”
“So this is some sort of dream, then.”
“I don’t know, honestly. Living people don’t usually pop out of their bodies like this either. Not even when they’re dreaming. Only dead people get up and walk around in the spirit world. You must be special.”
“Am I able to go back again? Into my body I mean.”
“Probably. Usually what happens is that lightning storm in a person’s head fizzles out, and then their spirit gets up and walks around. I always kind of thought a spirit was that lightning. But here you are.”
“I better be able to, somehow. Or I’m basically as dead as anyone else around here.”
“Nah. Pretty sure you’re not going to die right here, lying on the couch.”
“I hope not.”
“It probably has something to do with simply willing it, making the decision. Just like looking or moving.”
“But if I do that will I be able to get back out here again? This is really cool.”
“If you don’t know how you did it the first time, it was probably a random fluke.”
“Well, I better at least try it. Just to see if I can.”
“Alright. Good luck.”
“Ummm. Before I go… who are you, anyway? Are you like, a guardian angel or something?”
“I’m you.”
“What? How can that be? I’m me.”
“Well, you are going to die eventually, right? Everybody does.”
“Yeah… Of course, but...”
“And in the spirit world, time does not exist. You can just walk around through space and time. You can basically go anywhere.”
“You’re me after I die? You came back in time to check up on me?”
“Something like that.”
“How did I die?”
“Car accident. Well, actually you were on a bike. The cars hit each other and basically flipped over onto you.”
“Oh. Thanks for letting me know. All I have to do is never ride a bike again.”
“Nah. It doesn’t work like that, or nobody would ever die accidentally.”
“But you just told me how I die.”
“Yeah. But try passing that information along to your brain. Brains are idiots. They live in reality and they don’t even see it correctly, never mind the spirit world. Soon as you’re back in your body, you’re going to forget all about this. Your brain will start up with it’s same old bullshit, about what’s on TV, and what party you’re going to this weekend, and everything else. It’s a very narrow perspective.”
“But won’t I dream about it or whatever, and develop a weird phobia of bicycles? Isn’t that how this stuff works?”
“Nah. Brains are idiots. You can only get a phobia of bicycles by something scaring your brain into it. And apparently, that doesn’t happen because that’s how I died.”
“So no moving forward to check Friday’s lottery numbers and then jumping back into my body and buying a ticket.”
“You can definitely check the numbers. But you won’t be able to get any sort of message to your brain.”
“How long ago was it?”
“How long ago was what?”
“When you died.”
“I don’t know. Time is weird here. It doesn’t flow. It’s just a bunch of looking around, awareness. Could be 20 minutes. Could be an eternity.”
“You’ve apparently been here long enough to figure out how to look around in all the directions, and move and stuff.”
“Apparently it’s been a while, yes.”
“Do you remember what day I died?”
“March 25, 2023. Probably around 4:13 p.m. Near the corner of Marion and Traverse. You were only a few blocks from the hospital, but when a car falls on you, you’re basically done.”
“Can you talk to souls who haven’t stepped out of their body, like mine apparently has?”
“Well, yeah. It’s consciousness. They’re aware of everything in the spirit world. Spirits, I mean. They don’t reply, though. They’re focused on holding the connection or whatever it is.”
“Weird. But you can’t talk to brains.”
“You can. But they’re kind of deaf. It’s kind of like talking to a plant. You can babble on for hours and tell it to stay away from bikes or whatever. But it’s just gonna do what it’s gonna do. So no lottery win for you.”
"So what's the meaning of life? Do you know?"
"I could tell you, but you won't remember. Besides, you already know what the meaning of life is. You're a spirit, too, just like me."
"The meaning of life is making good choices, so that everybody shares equally in good things, even me."
"More importantly," he said, "it's getting that message across to your brain, so that it makes better choices when you. the spirit, slip back into simply being silent awareness. Brains are very afraid all day every day, afraid of losing things, afraid of pain. Creating a better world takes a lot of courage. It means realizing that some pain, some loss is okay, for the greater good, for the grand scheme."
"You just told me I'm going to die in a few years, and I don't feel afraid at all."
"Why would you be? This body here is not who you are. You are awareness. You are love."
"Yes," I said.
"Yes," he agreed.
“Alright, well… It was nice meeting you. If I don’t pop right back out again, see you later.”
"Be you later," he corrected.
I willed myself to rejoin my body, making the choice to slip back inside myself, and then
