Your Body is a Work of Art

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In my life, the stream has bubbled up from under the surface again. It carries particular influences, minerals, qualities, from the past. Therefore I don't believe Tony is a reincarnation of a particular being. But he is a working out of things from the past.

If we look at a painting, we see certain colours on it. That particular painting exists because of the texture, the minerals, the earth and chemicals that go into the paint or ink used. It is also a result of the movements, the skill the artist has put into it. It is an incorporation of all those things and many other things we have not mentioned. It is also an expression of the light that falls on it. Without the light it is not apparent. In different lighting conditions it will change its character in some way.

So the painting is partly an expression of a human being and their qualities and skills; it is partly an expression of the chemicals and minerals and surfaces involved. It is an extraordinary thing. When we look at it we are witnessing all of that. Maybe we don't realise it; perhaps we don't see all that goes into it. And of course, the painting is unique. There will never be a painting exactly like that. It might appear on the surface as the same, but there will never be quite the same mixture of minerals, chemicals, movements, human qualities, that entered into the painting.

Our body is just such a work of art. It is an extraordinary blending of an enormous number of people. Not just our parents, but our forebears going back into prehistory. There is also the powerful influence of the time and period in history in which we are born. The culture we live in weaves itself into who and what we become. A child born in today's world will be influenced by the extraordinary number of chemicals and additives, medicines and drugs, alcohol and nicotine, that are part and parcel of life today. They are all factors that go into the make up of who the person is and becomes. They are the chemicals in the 'paint' of personality.

Then there are the unique events and circumstances of that individuals life. The people met, the relationships encountered, the opportunities and traumas that events bring. All of those factors are like the paint, the surface, the artistry and skill that go into producing a painting. The uniqueness of those factors reflects very particular colours in the light that is our life.

Of course this is an analogy but I think it is a useful one. Light has in it every conceivable colour. It is the surface that the light falls on that brings out qualities. So it is the uniqueness of our body and consciousness that bring qualities out of the infinite possibilities of life. Innate in the forms of life are all the lessons and experiences it has gathered through unimaginable number of lives and creatures. The surface our body provides draws out of that infinite potential very particular qualities. We are the person we become because of the blending of all those unique factors.

How can anything in the present rule out factors from the past?

Chris: Well, people think that way because they see reincarnation as a certain thing. People think they have a former life as some particular person, and that person will be born again in a new situation.

Tony: I suppose what I feel about that is people often leave certain factors out of their thinking process. Everything in the present, whether it relates to agriculture, politics, religion or art, has arisen out of past influences and things learned. People see that and of course recognise their present life and feelings are connected with their immediate family and culture. What they often fail to see is that there are influences existing in them from the far past. So we can say that the present is an incarnation of the past in a new form. How is it we can't say that I am an incarnation of the past in a new form? We are not an incarnation of a tiny bit of the past, but a whole spectrum of it.

So the wonder of this is not that Tony is a reincarnation of a particular past personality, but that Tony is an expression of something that has always existed, and carries past wisdom and experience.

We Are Co-creators in the Cosmos

Chris: This has reminded me of something you talked about in regard to physical substance -- matter. You said that modern physics has shown that we change it by looking at it. What are the implications of that?

Tony: That is an amazing idea isn't it?

Considering that quantum physics now assures us that subatomic particles can change their very nature simply by us observing them, I often wonder if, when we look at a flower and feel how beautiful it is, we in some way change it.

In his book Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot gives an understandable description of this. He says that, 'Physicists have found compelling evidence that the only time electrons and other “quanta” manifest as particles is when we are looking at them. At all other times they behave as waves. This is as strange as owning a bowling ball that traces a single line down the lane while you are watching it, but leaves a wave pattern every time you blink your eyes.'

We usually see the world as bounded by time and three dimensions. But another extraordinary statement about the world around us is one put forward by Irish physicist John Stewart Bell. It is a quantum theorem that has revolutionised the way reality is considered. In brief, the theorem states that when two sub-microscopic particles are split and moved to a distance from each other, the action on, or of, particle 'A', is instantaneously reproduced with particle 'B'. This interaction does not rely on any known link or communication and is considered to stand above normal physical laws of nature, as it is faster than light. Prior to such findings it was thought nothing could transcend the speed of light. See Feature by Talbot.

Despite these findings we still hear scientists talking about the solid and time bound world in which nothing can move faster than light. I guess we all live in the past in one way or another, and in fact our world view, considering these new findings, is still dragging somewhere in the 19th century.

The everyday events in life are still miraculous

Newtonian physics, in which the atom was the fundamental and immutable particle in the universe, gradually robbed us of a magical view of our environment that existed previously, and still exists in many tribal cultures. This reminds me of something I read in Lyle Watson's book Supernature. He said that having written about some of the strange things that could be observed, which many scientists would never investigate because they appear to be completely impossible from their present view of the universe, a man in Italy wrote to him asking for Lyle to come and witness something his young son did. Lyle followed through on the request, and while observing the young boy of about four years old, the father rolled a tennis ball to his son. The son played with it for a while, and without any apparent struggle rolled the ball back. But now the ball was inside out without any break in its surface.

Lyle then took another ball and wrote his name on the outside of it. He rolled the ball to the boy and in a few minutes it was rolled back inside out.

Later, with witnesses, Lyle cut the second ball open and there was his signature on the inside of what had been an unbroken ball.

What Lyle says is that our present scientific view sees what he witnessed as completely impossible. It is against most of the fundamental things that our science states are laws of our universe, making what happened out of the question.

Having said that, here we are living in the world where it seems impossible for us to turn tennis balls inside out without cutting them in some way; distances have to be crossed physically by some means of transport; people appear to be completely separate from us in mind and body; death appears to be a final end; we feel hemmed in by the limits of our ability to know -- so what does it mean that a four year old boy turned a tennis ball inside out?

Well, the new physics begins to give us evidence that we live in the midst of a universe that is far more amazing than we have ever previously thought. We live in some ways as co-creators of this universe. But my deepest feelings about what this means is that we each have a phenomenal potential. We each have possibilities beyond anything we can imagine. As human beings we haven't even begun to really explore that potential and to use it in our everyday life. To me that is the most important path forward for each of us.

Personally I find it amazing that many Christians, who profess deep belief in their Bible, can't see and accept that. In Genesis it says, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness .... And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." That means we have the potential of being godlike. Miracles are part of our nature!

Are There Parallel Universes?

Chris: So what do you think about the idea of parallel universes?

Tony: David Deutsch, an Oxford University Professor describes parallel universes as the multiverse. What has been discovered in exploring quantum mechanics is that a universe must exist for every physical possibility. He goes on to say that quantum theory leaves no doubt that other universes exist in exactly the same sense that the single Universe that we see exists. He states, "This is not a matter of interpretation. It is a logical consequence of quantum theory."

For us to make any sense out of this we need to understand a little bit more about fundamentals of quantum physics. Classical physics maintained that an object or an action can only be what it is and where it is. It cannot be in one position in time and space, and also in another position in time and space at the same moment.

However, because of the findings in quantum physics that a subatomic particle when observed is a particle, and when not observed a wave, a new way of looking at the universe had to be arrived at. In quantum mechanics particles can be two things at once.

This paradoxical state has been applied to the idea of building a quantum computer. In conventional computers working with digital code, something is either a 0 or a 1. Digital code is built up from a combination of these two numbers. But a quantum computer can work in a paradoxical way. It can calculate using the 0 and 1 as a single possibility. One of the experiments in quantum physics is to project a single photon of light to a half silvered mirror that allows the photon to both continue straight on in its direction, and also to reflect it at right angles. Classical physics would say that a single particle such as a photon cannot do the two things at once. It would either continue straight on its path or be reflected at right angles. But quantum physics shows that it can in fact be both at once. These are some of the factors that underlie the statement that there are parallel universes. The nearest I have come to understanding this in any personal sense came about through using the technique of meditation called enlightenment intensive. During this something happened that seemed to me to be an experience of the central situation of our universe. It is very difficult to describe, and so I have to use a story to help produce a particular idea or realisation.

Are you looking at this from above or from the side? The cube is both things at once, but you can only see it as one or the other.

So imagine for a while that you are sitting looking at a wristwatch that has a second hand moving around the dial. As you look you notice that the movement stops, and you gradually realise that time has stopped. You begin to think about this, and after many speculations arrive at some understanding of it. But no time has passed.

You now begin to think about your life, and in doing so you explore all possible choices you could make, and the directions that could arise from those choices and actions. This is an incredible undertaking, but you finally arrive at every conceivable possibility. But no time has passed.

So you begin to think about another person that you know, and likewise you explore every possible direction they might take, and all the consequences that could arise out of being who they are, and what the results in the world would be of the many possibilities of their life. Having done this, no time has passed.

In this way you explore every living human being and the consequences of their lives through infinite duration. No time has passed.

What I am trying to illustrate by the story is that my experience during the meditation suggested that at the very core of our universe, and therefore of our existence, is a condition outside of time and space. And in that condition every possible direction, thought, action, decision and outcome has already been explored and is, at that level, already a reality. At the time I really felt that each of these realities could have physical existence. At that level, I as a person was in reality all of the many possibilities that I could be. I was a murderer, an alcoholic, a genius, a pervert, an artist, a dropout, single, married, everything!

What I sensed at the time, and I still fail to understand intellectually in detail, is that any of those possibilities could be made real in the here and now. I could claim any of those possibilities, and because they already exist, they could manifest in my life now. This, I understood, as being how spontaneous and immediate miracles of healing occurred to some people.

When I compare this to Deutsch's view of parralel universes I feel that there is still a tendency for him to see these incredibly different dimensions of experience in something of a materialistic fashion. Instead of saying all possibilities are here and now in that one amazing state, he builds an idea of lots of copies existing as innumerable material universes.

So there are other ways of looking at the possibility of parallel universes. One of these is to realise that our sense organs give us a very limited view of the universe around us. There is the possibility that there are forms of life having no need of a physical body. Just as radio and television transmissions and signals picked up by mobile phones, exist, or coexist, in the space we move around in and make our life in, so other beings can exist and coexist in the space we know without us being aware of them.

Many years ago when I had an out of body experience, I stood before my mother and she could not see me. That was very strange because I was very apparent and real to myself. I existed in the same room, the same space, as she did, and yet she had no awareness of me. Yet my dog, who had been asleep in front of the fire, did see me and responded. What I realised from this was that if my mother could have been aware of my thoughts and feelings, then she would have known of my presence. But because she, in common with most of us, cannot be aware of what I think and feel unless I express it physically in some way by facial expression, or words, then beings existing at that level are invisible to us.

So in that sense we can say there are parallel universes existing with us here and now. We experience this for ourselves daily in being aware of our own personal experiences that are largely hidden from others unless we express them in some way. Therefore the universe of our own person coexists with the billions of other unique universes around us.

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