Higher Existence
In a discussion with my brother a few years ago, I asked him a random question:
What would you say if I told you that I think that all of humanity is just the living subconscious of a greater being? Yaani like we’re a dream…
His answer?
I would say that it’s impossible.
So let me explain.
This being could be anything. It could be a god-like entity. It could be a state of mind, like Nirvana in Buddhism, where we live our lives in a form of alternate reality “a-la-The Matrix” where we are ourselves, but just living multiple lives in multiple ways.
As the “living subconscious” of this Being, in effect, we’re like its underlying “mental process”, if there is such a thing. A sort of organic computer to run through different scenarios of Life to find an optimal path. This would sort of explain why so many peoples throughout history, though separated by location, culture, and traditions, hold similar beliefs and characteristics. They are just conditions for the theory of Life to hold.
So at the absolute minimum, we are all just aspects of the same person.
Now, couldn’t it be possible that we’re all just figments of some greater Being’s imagination?
Maybe we just need to find out what exactly our purpose is and the guy’s mind comes back online…
My idea was that we are all just figments of this greater Being’s senses. His subconscious. We’re not really “thoughts” per se, but we’re an organic way of computing. At the bare minimum, we humans are all the same. What actually varies between people is their personality — and personality is built up from the range of experiences that someone has had in their lives. So possibly, even in a different timeline, there may have been someone exactly like you. Not in resemblance, but in thought. Your range of experiences were similar and your thought patterns were also similar. So in actual sense, what was being tested was change in beliefs & thoughts over Time.
Me: Maybe this one Being is just running through many scenarios in its head. Then that’s what happens in our world. So like, there’d be many versions of ‘you’ that have existed, just with different variables. Like race, sex, background…
Kimaita: That’s like a Parallel Universe.
Me: Not really, coz I’m thinking that maybe we’re not as unique as we think we are.
Kimaita: I think inside we are more similar than we are different…
Me: Like look at you. Imagine that somewhere else on Earth someone else thinks exactly like you. Maybe it’s a different ‘you’ and with different variables. Maybe it’s a woman. Maybe it’s an Austrian guy.
Kimaita: HELL NO!
Again, you could have two people; one male, one female — and they lead strikingly similar lifestyles and have had similar backgrounds. The “test” here may be differences in behaviors across Gender. If one was rich, and one poor, the “test” may be the difference due to Social Standing… and so on.
I’d even come to think of the different “Ages of Man” as building blocks for this concept. Looking at the different concepts of the Ages of Man, you’ll find different ideas. The Aztecs believed that the Earth had gone through four cycles of creation and destruction by the time their empire had risen. Christians believe in the Six Ages of the World, each Age separated by major events from the Bible. Even Shakespeare had his own spin on things, where he chronicled the life of Man into seven “ages” — Infancy, Childhood, The Lover, The Soldier, Justice, Old Age, Dementia/Death. It is these that I used to try to make sense of this idea.
What if in each Age, the Being had a different goal. In times before Christ, the main concept was Survival, because civilizations did all that they could to eke out an existence from the Earth. All civilizations that died out can be seen as discarded ideas.
After this, came a time of learning and discovery. Religion bloomed during the Renaissance and so on. This could have been a burst of creativity, such as the one you’d see in a child as he/she develops.
Next was the teenage years when you’re still young, and you know it, but you want to prove that you’re an adult. Maybe during this time is when we had all the social intolerance and anger amongst ourselves. The Holocaust, World War I and II, and so on. Everyone is trying to get themselves noticed.
I also thought that maybe Science could be the rational side to this Being. Trying to give a plausible, material explanation for everything.
However, there are several roadblocks in this line of thought, and several side steps I’ve tried to use to make this idea make sense to me.
- I can’t prove this Being exists.
Sidestep: I’m taking an agnostic view, as this would be closest to a scientific approach to the idea.
2. What’s the “ideal” path?
Sidestep: That’s what we’re still trying to work out, so we’ll know it when we get to the end of the cycle — but each religion has its own tenets and guidelines for how its adherents should behave. Even parody religions like Pastafarianism have a “holy book” containing The Eight “I’d Really Rather You Didn’ts” . So it's kinda easy.
Plus a few other holes that I find each time I revisit the topic in my mind. This is how the discussion concluded by the way…
Kimaita: Zee. You sound like you are starting The Cult of the Dreaming Being.
Hehehe, there’s a story in there somewhere. Maybe a movie or even an entire religion.
