The X,Y, Z of It


by Melody Sumner Carnahan

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Drawing YThere is no such thing as “distance” as we know it. Distance, measured in visual terms, is a halfway point between the physical and the purely, for lack of a better word, “immaterial” realm. When someone becomes distant, she goes to another “location” and to do so she figuratively or literally becomes smaller to an observer who remains behind.

On our physical material plane, extreme manifestations are named distance and they exist in a perceptibly continuous space. However, the immaterial plane, which intersects with the physical, is made up of what is termed discontinuous space.

Let us say you are at point a with one friend and you want to visit another friend at point b, which lies at the extreme end of this wide, elongated valley. A valley so vast all of Manhattan could fit inside it. You proceed in the following manner: First, you believe that Friend B exists at point b, though neither Friend B nor point b is visible from where you stand. However, you do have a direct line of sight to point b, and, if your eyesight were refined enough you could indeed “see” Friend B using your physical eyes. What you do is say good-bye to Friend A and move toward where you believe point b to be located, following a theoretical line. Friend A, unmoving, watches you leave, watches you literally become smaller to his eyes. At some point, we will call it x, you disappear to him altogether, which means he forgets you. At some point, call it y — which may or may not be the same as point x — you suddenly “appear” in the smallest discernible size to Friend B and become larger for him until you stand before him in actual size. This means he truly “sees” you for the first time.

It is agreed that a person can change from one location to another by willing it, much as she can make the muscles of her arm move by willing them to. The muscles of the arm often move without conscious participation, as when you find your arm abruptly lifting off a heated coil or in the midst of an obscene gesture you had no intention to make. Let us postulate that you can will yourself to another location and that it can be accomplished in more than one way.

A few in our material world are born with the ability to will themselves to another location without engaging the body. During such travel, the physical body remains fixed while a mind conglomerate travels to another location. In examining accounts, it seems verifiable that emotions themselves perform as fuel. The extraordinary thing about this mode of travel is that even without the organs of sense — which have been left behind with the body — the traveler is said to “sense” heat and cold, to “see” certain details, to “hear” what is being said by people she observes, even to experience the “touch” of another. I have personally experienced this and will subsequently relate the details.

In the immaterial world, the total you does in fact get smaller, but no energy is consumed in the process. In fact, energy is released to the environment, increasing in inverse proportion to size. People on the plane of mind experience each other intensely in the moment, but there is no “distance,” per se. Allow me to explain. The visual sense remains intact, but it is as if the entire body has become the eyes — comparable to the sensate acuity of the membrane of a cell. Immaterially, a person can exist in two locations at once, and the body’s receptivity is heightened by an increase in ubeity, even though the body in each location is diminished in size.

Travel does not exist on the immaterial plane. Rather we speak of the ability to manifest at different locations. This means, theoretically, that one could exist at an infinite number of locations and size would be infinitely small at each. You may ask, are entities actually shrinking when they manifest at a number of locations. The answer is yes they are. That’s how the physics of the immaterial works. However, such shrinking creates an influx of energy — energy is specifically increased by multiple manifestations. That is the law.

Physically, human beings are holotrophs, obtaining energy for movement and growth by engulfing or swallowing living matter. It is true in both states — the physical and the immaterial — that living entities are never the same from moment to moment. However, living systems collectively comprise the most permanent and stable form of matter in the universe. On the immaterial plane — which as I said is intimately connected to the physical — there are no true objects, no things, only willing entities. One being can inhabit the same space as another; in fact, two or more often merge in a concentric arrangement, infusing but never consuming one another. They are called “concentrics.” To any one the whole constellation might be more or less present simultaneously. Following is an attempt to describe how it works:

To any entity’s perception — remember that for any one others can exist inside it — there is a point at once central which contains less than nothing. There are spheres of infinite dimension. Other spheres, not infinite, are so indistinct they barely persist. Those are the revulsors, the “isolates,” our greatest enemies and oftentimes our dearest loved ones. The ones who for various reasons won’t give you the time of day. When creatures do not maintain an entirely equal attraction for one another, they may still continue to exist in a coincident field. In such cases, there is no way to determine, empirically, if other entities are extremely small, or if one’s self has become exceedingly large. Are other beings part of you or are you a part of them? Algebra cannot solve this dilemma.

On the physical plane, entities not oneself seem predictably smaller than oneself in terms of value. Physically, the entire universe seems to be outside oneself at any time. Is it because the self perceives space as something into which the body is born, through which it moves, metabolizes, reproduces, and dies? There is no limit to space. Space is truly discontinuous. Yet to experience the physical as infinite and discontinuous constitutes a supreme mastery of mind.

On the immaterial plane, the entire universe exists within ones own energy membrane. Why then, on the immaterial plane, do entities sometimes become smaller as they do with physical distance? Is it because you no longer need them or no longer feel them a necessary part of your life?

Going somewhere means that you no longer think about the person or place you wish to leave but you think instead with more frequency and duration about another person or another location. This is simply a physical description of a change of heart: a straight line being the shortest distance between two points but not so easy to obtain in real life. Some say emotions or feelings are not subject to geometry and its laws. I believe they are.

Desire itself contraindicates truth, such that in order to get what she needs she does not always say what she means. The human sensory apparatus has built and makes use of the tool of geometry for moving about physically. However, geometry has no material basis. Geometry exists within the realm of abstract thought, which is how it intercepts and informs the sensate life.

How, on any scale, could each and every being be inside each and every other being. A sphere with an infinite number of points equidistant from all others is the theory behind the fact that people carry around inside their souls every person they have ever loved, as well as those they have hated. Death makes no difference. Those loved or hated ones may carry around inside their minds the lover or the hater, or they may carry around an entirely different set of individuals, or no one at all. It has been said that people exist who can hold all others alive in their minds, even ones with whom they have never had direct contact. This may be what is meant by samadhi or “enlightenment,” not a depletion or an emptying but an active encompassing.

What about the people who have no others inside themselves?

They are simply at an extreme location.

Why?

Because they want to be...

The remainder of the treatise is wanting.


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