posted July 19, 2015 05:02 AM
Utopia.It's not an ideal, it's a place. Actually, it's a plan. Actually, it's a planet. A plan-ette. A Little Plan. And a Little Plan is just a part of the Big Plan.
Of course, the Big Plan doesn't really have "parts". The Big Plan is a Whole. It is One. One verse. That's why we call it the Uni-verse.
But that's the great thing about being a god; one can choose to focus on only some of What Is, and call it a "part". He can set it a-part for himSelf.
Once upon a time...
...and by that, I mean so long ago that the lIght waves and the sOund waves from the event have long ago reached the edge of the Uni-verse and ceased to be. The Uni-verse, or All That Is, or Is-ness, has a definite "size" -- it's the distance it takes for a wave to finally dissipate its energy completely, for all of its subatomic particles to break down into sub-subatomic particles and then for those to break down into sub-sub-subatomic particles and then for those to break down into sub-sub-sub-subatomic particles... and so on, until they've broken down into nothing-ness, "nothing" being simply the name for the truly irreducible particle: too small to reflect light, too small to generate gravity, too small to matter, even for God. These particles fall away from the wave as it travels, and return to -- become -- the field we call "space". When the wave finally dissipates completely, that is the edge of the Uni-verse. That is the point at which something becomes nothing, the point at which infinity proves itself another name for zero.
But I digress. Hey, it's fun, try it sometime.
Once upon a time, the gods (or God, if you prefer, but the story is much less interesting when told from the perspective of Singularity) set a-part a plan-et for themSelves. They chose it as a hOme, and named it Utopia.
Utopia knows no darkness, because it is suspended in perfect gravitational balance between two Stars, which cover its entire surface in light. The gods once called these stars the Twin Lights, but they've forgotten that name, because once they moved into their new home, once they in-habit-ed the planet, they couldn't see them anymore. They gave Utopia a "firmament above", an atmosphere of suspended water, so evenly distributed that it is a flat gray haze. This unswirling mist protects them completely from the entropy of their two Suns; no ultraviolet radiation or X-rays (or any of the other harmful waves they'd discovered) can penetrate it, and it diffuses their dual lights into an even unity.
Utopia doesn't spin, and there is no gravity. The gods need no gravity to hold them there, of course; they are held there by their Will, which is all the pOwer there ever really is.
Utopia has no "land", as we know it. It is a giant (from our perspective, anyway) drop of water. A perfect sphere. Its surface is completely calm and undisturbed, and therefore reflects everything. It is a mirrorball, invisible in the even grayness it reflects.
The strange thing (to us humans, who don't handle paradox well) is that while that water is absolutlely still, it is at the same time an infinite crescendo of waves. I will explain...
The gods themselves are that water. It is for gOOd reason we call water the "element of life", for that is the whole truth. They are that water; that water is their consciousness; and every thought and feeling within that water emanates from each of them as a wave. The uncanny thing is that the gods are so in harmony with one another, that all their thoughts and feelings -- all those waves -- intersect each other in precisely the right way that they all "cancel each other out" -- physically speaking only, of course. Hence, the innumerable thoughts and feelings of the gods, which we would tend to expect would produce a cacophany, instead hold each Other, each molecule of water, in perfect stillness at the same time.
Utopia is their collective dream, and because of their harmony that dream can never be known to any but themselves. We would look and see only the mirror-ball, perfectly still, perfectly silent; but we would gaze unknowingly upon the infinite activity of all their dreams.
For dreaming is what the gods do. What need has anyOne to bother with physical existence, when the experience of it can be had without it, for the effortless cost of a thought?
This question was once asked in earnest, and that's the story I want to tell here.
The gods dream All Things, so the question was inevitable. And when one of the gods asked himself that question, the surface of Utopia rippled.
That question is the great cosmic anomoly, the definition of disharmony. As that question, that wave of consciousness, spread out from its Asker, it disrupted every other wave it encountered. And every wave it disrupted was pushed -- even if only ever-so-slightly -- out of harmony with the waves it intersected. It began a chain reaction. Utopia trembled for the first (and only) time, and the intensity of that trembling grew. The gods' dreams were not manifesting as they intended. The dreams of the gods were slowly turning to nightmares.
All the other gods rose up, woke from their dreams, and turned their eyes to the questioning god.
They said to him, "Your dream threatens to destroy Utopia. You are a god, and dream what you Will, but you cannot dream that here. We have a Little Plan for you. We will set you a-part from us so that you may dream your dream, so that you may have the Answer to your Question. You will dream alone -- you will be All-One -- and you will know every form of pain that question produces, for you will inflict it upon yourSelf. And when you have experienced every possible permutation of that dream, your Question will be Answered, your dream will be over, and you may return, and will reach Utopia again, and continue to dream harmoniously with us."
Thus the gods (or God) Willed, and so it Was (Is).
And the consciousness of the Questing God blinked; it ceased to be and instantly Was again, but it was not the same. He awoke in that instant as the first cell of life on a lifeless rock, far out in space from Utopia. And in time, when the Questing God's dream had become of himSelf as Man, and had dreamed into existence for himself a language, he somehow knew that he could not call the planet to which he had (now unknowingly) been exiled "Utopia" -- so he named it "Earth" instead.
And I think you (he/I) know the rest of the story...