The Key to Fractal Awareness
The key to fractal awareness is conviction. Most of us live most of our lives on Fractal -2 (of I am the doer). When I find myself on Fractal -2, I first try to adjust my perception and slide over into Fractal -1(of God is the doer). From there I slide over into Fractal 0 (of Nothing is happening). The goal is to remain on Fractal 0 as much as possible, and as often as possible, while holding His presence. All forms of attachment causes bias in our perception. In this regard, Fracal 0 is the most unbiased of all perceptual frameworks. It is only from Fractal 0 that we can see things clearly, with nothing to gain and no attachments whatsoever. If clarity of mind is what we seek, it cannot be found outside of Fractal 0. On Fractal 0, we are in His peace, at rest, and carefree. We trust that His will is already Done, and therefor nothing is happening. Detachment from any and all things including ourselves, is both effortless and immediate. Thus our minds are clear, our love for God unblemished. It is a joyful state of endless gratitude.
It is only from Fractal 0 that the world, including ourselves, can be seen clearly. Fractal 0 is also the only place where Fractal -1 and -2 can be seen clearly for what they are as well. Fractal 0 is the true seat of the mind.
On Fractal -1 God is all, knows all, and does all. On Fractal -1 God’s will rules. This is where our feelings for the world such as our love for others as well as our fears are effortlessly managed. If God is all, then I can love all. If God does all, I can easily pardon all, and I can surely accept all things as God’s will, as well. It is the fractal of acceptance, and of forgiveness, including self forgiveness. Forgiving others becomes completely effortless on this fractal.
However, love for God is still not possible on Fractal -1. This is because we cannot both love and fear the same entity, at the same time. On Fractal -1 is where fear of all others is effortlessly extinguished. It is instead, replaced by fear of God. We no longer respect the power of any man or of anything in nature, but we come to respect & thereby fear the power of God. On Fractal -1, we fear that the same God that loves us and provides for us, may intern also have a need to provide us with with things like poverty, sickness, injury, death, or even the loss of a loved one. Even though we may reason that these seeming misfortunes, are really for our own good, we still feel burdened by them and fear them. This fear of God, disallows unconditional & fearless Love for God. You cannot truly love God and fear Him at the same time. Thus, unconditional, fearless, true love for God is not at all possible on Fractal -1. It is only the carefree clarity of mind and heart that Fractal 0 provides, that allows for truly fearless, truly unconditional, truly unbridled, spontaneous, & effortless Love for God. Yet, it is on Fractal -1 where we make an effort to Love God by trying to love all of creation as his children. Because God is all and does all, we try to love all, and accept all as his will. We further trust all that happens is for the best possible reason. This love for all, for all is God becomes the very foundation for our actions on Fractal -2.
Fractal -2 rules our actions, and determines our responsibilities. Fractal -2 is the fractal of morality, conscience, 계Kye, and Natural law. On this fractal, we strive for right action; we do onto others as we would have them do unto us; we mean what we say, and say what we mean. It is on Fractal -2 that we sort out how as humans we should live our lives on earth with other humans. How should children be raised? How should we produce food? What technologies should we use, or not use? It is on Fractal -2 that we sort out all the aspects of interaction (both human and with nature), taking into consideration all future ramifications of our actions. The guiding light of Fractal -2 is our conscience. Conscience is the Law of God written in our hearts, it is a blueprint for harmonious existence written in all our hearts. However, for the revelations of our conscience(heart) to ring clearly in us, total detachment is paramount. Total detachment is something only Fractal 0 can provide. Thus, the seat of our mind must be resting in His peace on Fractal 0, supplemented by love in our hearts provided by Fractal -1. Then and only then, can we clearly discern the revelations of our conscience to determine our actions on Fractal -2.
This whole process of arriving at Fractal 0 through -1, must take place in the absence of self-coercion. One cannot force oneself to do anything (or think anything), let alone others. Coercion can never coexist with Love, and this includes self coercion. As Baba says we must “Be Natural.” So how can all this be done naturally without self coercion? This is the question I wish to address in this section.
Belief and Conviction
When we have to try to believe something, that is because we don’t actually believe it. It is only pertaining to the stuff we find hard to believe, that the need to ‘try to believe’ arises. Every effort we make to try to believe something, only serves to mask our disbelief in the matter. Conviction is an entirely different animal than self-coerced belief. It is only when a belief is tested remorselessly against every possible argument, or doubt, that it transforms itself into unshakable conviction. Conviction comes from thinking something through thoroughly. It is only when a belief becomes irrefutable to us, that we arrive at conviction. So if you want to go beyond mere belief, and enter the domain of conviction, it is better to think things through from every angle, than it would be to try harder to believe blindly. Blindly trying to believe something, is a dishonest activity that goes directly against our conscience. For me, it is more that irrational, it is wrong.
What is the difference between ‘belief’ and ‘faith’? By belief, I am not talking about the kind of belief like ‘who killed Kennedy?’ or the kind of belief of wether ‘Moses actually split the sea or not.’ The kind of belief we are interested in, pertains only to the beliefs that affect our perceptual framework.
‘Belief’ is acceptance despite lack of evidence.
‘Faith’ is obedience despite consequence.
‘Faith’ is a ‘belief’ that has been assimilated into one’s world view and made ‘real’ in one’s perceptual framework. Thus it is ‘lived’, as one’s life naturally ‘abides’ in it. This kind of ‘Conviction’ builds upon a belief’s irrefutability.
True faith is a function of ‘conviction’ not mere ‘belief’. Conviction causes a belief to be assimilated into one’s world-view. Unlike beliefs and opinions, conviction causes us to see the world differently. Faith is made up of convictions. While faiths are lived, beliefs are entertained. And what sets the two apart is the level of conviction. No belief will ever make it into your world view, without first going through the due process of doubt, or a thorough think through. Then and only then, does a belief become a conviction. Once, direct experiential certainty is had, we go beyond ‘conviction’ into the realm of ‘knowing’. Experiential certainty is exactly where conviction ends and knowing begins. In this sense conviction can be said to be the necessary preparation for experiential knowing.
The key to Fractal Awareness is first and foremost the destruction of Fractal -2. The primary attribute of Fractal -2 is individual free-will. This is the idea that I am the doer of my thoughts, feelings, and actions; that I as the doer am responsible for my destiny, my fortune, and karma. Once this false notion of free-will agency is destroyed, we automatically find ourselves on Fractal -1. So lets do just that right now, by watching this very short (and very easy to understand) video clip carefully:
This experiment was conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany. The reaction of Marcus at the end of the video says it all. After filming this video, he literally disappeared from the screen for a couple of years. I believe, it shocked him to the very core. The neuroscientists in this video make an assumption that our ‘brains’ are doing the thinking. This is a false assumption. Consciousness is the ground of being upon which matter (such as the brain) resides, not the other way around. Consciousness is not local to any brain. It is non-local.
We now have good circumstantial evidence for this. There is only one mind, not many. To understand exactly what I mean, watch this short video on the ‘wisdom of the crowd’:
As individuals we may seem ‘erroneous’ but as a collective whole we seem to reach for ‘perfection.’ If this experiment would have sampled 160,000 people guessing the number of jelly beans instead of 160, we can see that they would have arrived at an even closer number. This is the exact type of accuracy that we find at the sub-atomic, or quantum level. Quantum physics is by far and away, the most exact science known to man. It is said to be the “The Most Precisely Tested Theory in the History of Science.” Yet it is all probabilistic. What you just saw is the same type probabilistic accuracy exhibited by ordinary people. This is pretty exciting circumstantial evidence for there being only ONE MIND functioning in what seems to be many minds. Welcome to Fractal -1. But now, we will destroy Fractal -1 with Fractal 0.
So how do we establish ourselves in Fractal 0 with conviction, not mere belief. With the dawn of the atomic age in the last century, scientist came to know that most of matter is composed of empty space. I’m sure you’ve heard explanations about how ‘if an atom was a fly, the empty space around it is the size of a stadium.’ Or perhaps you’ve heard that if ‘all the atoms on the earth were squished together they’d fit onto one football field.’ But this does not establish Fractal 0. At the Atomic level, even though empty space comprises 99.99999999%, there is still that 0.0000001% of atom’s that actually have mass. Fractal 0 requires absolutely Nothing, not almost nothing. For this we must go even deeper into the foundations to the sub-atomic level.
Digital Universe
The Planck length is the scale at which classical ideas about gravity and space-time cease to be valid, and quantum effects dominate. This is where scientists discovered that our universe is not analog but digital — Digital as in pixelated. Computer screens are made up of pixels. how many pixels there are per square inch determines the resolution(clarity) of a digital image. Our universe is made up of pixels at the Plank length, which is the smallest possible quanta. In other words, the resolution of our universe is composed of Pixels the size of 1.616229(38)×10−35 meters. This means that everything we know of is digital, and therefore computable,and therefore simulate-able, not unlike a simulated world inside a computer. This means that Information(data) is all there really is, and nothing else. Recently, I watched a panel of prominent physicists discussing what they call the ‘Simulation hypothesis,’ or ‘computation hypothesis.’ And I noted one physicist saying “there is no evidence to contradict this.” Einstein once said to Neils Bhor “Are you saying that the moon is really not there, if I don’t look at it?” Nails Bhor responded with the same answer “Do you have any evidence to contradict this?” Einstein, a staunch materialist at the time, was silent.
For a period, there seems to be two kinds of Physicists. One type has
“consciousness” as the ground of all being. The other has “matter” as the
ground of being, from which consciousness is an emergent phenomena. When
‘matter’ is set as the ground of being, Quantum Physics is full of contradictions. When ‘consciousness’ is set as the ground of being, there are no contradictions.
You and I know, through Baba that matter is a byproduct of consciousness,
not the other way around. Quantum Physics shows this. It is the ‘Mind’ that has a
‘brain’, not the ‘brain’ that has a mind. David bohm, Amit Goswami, Lothar
Schäfer, and Schrodinger, are among those who came to the conclusion that
‘consciousness’ must be the ground of being. For them the contradictions are gone.
For the rest, they use the famous phrase “shut up and calculate,” to avoid
facing the implications of Quantum Physics.
More modern physicists have come to believe, what we have is a universe made up entirely of information only. And that information is not written or encoded on any verifiable substance whatsoever. This places us in a perfectly substance-less universe, save the ‘apparent’ effects of that information(data). But this information cannot in anyway be placed in the world. This information, therefore must be in a substance-less MIND, and seems only verifiable by minds. As Rumi puts it “the world’s existence is not in the world.” Nothing is actually happening, all there really is, is information creating an ‘appearance’ of something. The information itself is just, so to say, ‘sitting there’ in a MIND. In a very real sense, Information is all there is. Yet, it is not made of anything, and has no moving parts. Baba calls this information(data), INFINITE INTELLIGENCE. In the Nothing and the Everything it states:
“Imagination is contained in INFINITE INTELLIGENCE and this imagination is nothing.”
–N&E 218
“To experience Its Self(Soul),
the INFINITE INTELLIGENCE must have consciousness,
and not experience creation.
This means that it must be conscious of Itself
and at the same time be unconscious of everything else.”
–N&E 202
Thus we have INFORMATION(Imagination) which is nothing, sitting nowhere. Welcome to fractal 0, where nothing is happening, in nowhere. The only possible answer to why ‘Nothing is happening’ is ‘He finished it.’
“Until Everything awakened fully (infinitely)
and asked itself, “WHO AM I?”
and answered, “I AM GOD,”
the states of Infinite Consciousness
and Infinite Unconsciousness were not established
and creation did not begin.” –N&E 31
All was DONE before creation began.
Ultimately, Conviction is the key to Truth awareness. Baba tells us to ‘abide in the Truth.’ He also tells us that an Aspirant is someone who seeks “the highest Truth.” As explained earlier, to abide in this Truth, one must first have conviction, not mere belief. In the next section, I ask the question:
What does it mean to live in the Truth?
How does one ‘abide in the Truth?’
Abiding in the Highest Truth
The white areas represent Reality, and Blue areas represent Illusion.
When we see the world through the lens of Fractal -2 goggles, we are in a world, as Alan Watts well puts it, “alone and afraid in a world I never made.” Even now, I sometimes find myself looking at the world through Fractal -2 glasses. Then I would find myself quickly reminding myself by saying:
“Listen Me; first of all, Nothing is happening. Nothing is happening because God finished it. He loves me infinitely. If he loves me, how could he not have finished it? He’s God, with infinite power, knowledge, and intelligence. You know what that means. That means he’s so infinitely capable he could not have not finished it. So relax. Even if the computer repair guy rips you off. It don’t matter cause nothing is happening anyway. He finished it. Remember? Wake up, Me! Just know that nothing is happening because he loves you and is infinitely capable. Lets repeat his name. Relax! Relax in His peace. Remember, Nirvana is “the great sigh of relief.” We feel relief because God(my daddy) finished it. Daddy loves you and His peace is awesome. My God is awesome! — Remember Him? “He ain’t a real god, if he couldn’t even finish it, like a Real God could have, and would have!” — Remember? Repeat da name. And hold His presence. Hang on to his Daman. “None of this is happen’n anyway!”
FYI, I am having my computer repaired right now.
This is what I find myself saying to myself to fight off the Fractal -2 goggles. Usually this works and it is able to get me out of Fractal -2 and into the safest place in existence, His loving arms, where God finished everything leaving nothing undone — i.e. Fractal Zero(0). In the Bible God says “come have a taste of my peace!”
“His peace is so awesome, and worldly peace sucks.”
However, sometimes the self hypnotism of Fractal -2 is so strong that secondary measures are needed to subdue the beast. If the direct approach to Fractal 0 fails, here is the next thing I find myself telling myself:
“Listen Me! Not that me, living in the phenomenal world, I’m not talking to you. You don’t even exist, so why should I give you the time of day. I’m talking to Me, not me. I’m talking to the Me that was there before I was born, the unborn Me, that will be there for eternity, not the one that will one day die, not the one that is made of flesh.
Listen! Do you really think that computer repair man has free will? Do you really think that he has a choice whether to rip you off, or not? God is all, knows all, and does all. That man isn’t doing himself, God is. Whatever happens is always exactly God’s will. All that can happen, is always the best possible thing that could have happened. Why? Because He loves you, and he couldn’t leave anything to chance. Do you really think God would let us have free will, so that we could mess things up! No! He leaves nothing to chance, when it comes to his children. He is Perfection itself, and so is all of creation. He is actually incapable of error. Error is not only impossible, it has never occurred, not even once, has error ever occurred in the phenomenal world. Not that Universe’s even exists (Fractal 0 commercial)! If that repair guy rips you off for a couple of bucks, its probably because you relieved him of his fortune in a past life, and God setup a merciful pay-back arrangement, quite drastically in your favor! Right! Listen, we don’t even know for sure if this guy even exists? If time, space, and matter doesn’t exist, how can that dude exist? Quantum physics! Remember! Hold God’s presence and be at peace. ”
In this way, I am constantly trying to fractal out of -2, into -1, and then to Fractal 0. The goal is to have Fractal 0 maintain a 51% hegemony, over my world view, at all times, and to have Fractal -1 maintain hegemony over the remaining 49%, at all times; and always to function ‘naturally’ according to Natural Law(conscience) in Fractal -2. The Key is to live coherently on all fractals, to abide in his Truth on all Fractals, in the proper order of dominance, so that (perhaps) one day He(God) can turn the key in me. To ready the vessel to receive the Truth, i.e. to ready the key-hole to receive God’s key, and thereby become purposeless, is the purpose of all existence, is my purpose.
“The Goal of life is to arrive at purposelessness, which is the sate of Reality.”
— Meher Baba
This was a specimen of my mind, for your perusal.