I'll See You In Your Dreams (6 page)

“Convertible to energy?” Charlie raised an eyebrow. 

“I shouldn’t have said convertible. No Charlie, not a vehicle that helps you pick up chicks.”

“Stanley, I just wanted a clarification of ‘convertible to energy’ in the view of physics as interpreted by you, my guide through the parallel universes of boring to more boring.”

The floor creaked under Stanley’s foot. He stopped and began to make it squeak intentionally just to irritate Charlie.

“It may soon cease to be boring, Mr. C.” 

“Uh oh, I know I’m in trouble when you start calling me Mr. C. It’s like my mother using my middle name.”

Stanley began a repetition of squeaks with the floor. Feeling he had sufficiently irritated Charlie, he paused.

“Okay, Mr. C, convertible to energy means that a log, say, can be burned up and converted to energy. All physical objects contain tremendous amount of energy. The atomic and hydrogen bombs were just science releasing the energy from some matter. Don’t worry too much about that. It’s only important that you understand that the physical universe, the seemingly real stuff, is made up of matter or particles that have mass which can be weighed, measured etc.”

“Okay, wait a minute, Stanley, you said seemingly real stuff. Are you going into that meta physical, mumbo jumbo thing?” 

“No, Charlie, pure and simple science.”

“Okay, go on, so we have real pieces of stuff called particles.”

Charlie gestured with his hand in the little sideways bye- bye to convey give it to me.

“Okay Mr. C, there are particles, there’s energy, and some say that particles are made up of small waves of energy. Nevertheless, there has to be some space for them to exist in, and they must continue through time. That pretty much sums up the physical universe, pretty simple.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask about the parallel universe to the physical universe. That has got to be one long explanation since physics has just discovered it.”

“Nope, Charlie, it’s just as simple. It is a universe that runs parallel to this one, but made up of opposite material.  Are you ready to go one step beyond Steven Hawkins and the top physicists of the world?”

“You are one arrogant megalomaniac, Stanley.”

“Did you learn that big word in a psyche class, Charlie?”

Stanley stood and Charlie could see the contempt oozing from Stanley’s face.

“Damn, Stanley, you scare me sometimes. You seem to hate psychiatry, and I’m afraid people are going to think you are some kind of nut if you keep saying things like that.”

“Oh, really, Charlie? And who would label me a nut; a psychiatrist perhaps or perhaps a wannabe shrink?”

Stanley continued.

“If you research their history you will find a track record of dismal failure in helping anyone in a positive way. True science would reconsider its basic assumptions and correct itself toward predictable results. Psychiatry refuses to do that. It chose instead to mask itself in the veil of science and became a widely accepted pseudoscience through social manipulation, as conceived by Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays.

“That, my dear Charlie, is psychiatry’s only value, manipulating the public for elitist groups or governments. Their propaganda is effective, but their ridiculous psychological theories can be dispelled by anyone with an IQ over eighty, with a still functioning mind not yet numbed by anti-depressants. They’re nothing more than gossips at the water cooler of life, and like many gossips, create chaos and destruction.”

“I didn’t mean to make you cranky, Stanley, or get off the subject. So where were we?”

Charlie got up and poured two coffees. He returned and handed Stanley one.

“Perhaps it wasn’t off the subject at all, Charlie.” Stanley seemed to disappear into his own mind for a moment, then returned with a gleam in his eyes and a small smile on his face.

“I want you to think of your car. Can you do that, Charlie?”

“Think of my car?”

“Se Habla Español, Charlie?”

“Okay, Stanley, I’m thinking of my car!” Charlie responded sarcastically.

“Are you, Charlie?”

“Yes, damn it, I am.”

“You’re thinking of your car?”

“I hate it when you do the all knowing magician trick bullshit!” Charlie replied with irritation.

“This, oh simple one, is just that: Think of your car!”

“Okay, I’m thinking of my car!”

“So, Charlie, when I asked you to think of your car, did you create a mental picture of your car?”

Charlie stood and went over to the window.

“Yes, I did, Stanley, my man.”

“So, who is looking at that picture?”

“What?”

“Simple question Charlie. Who is looking at the picture of your car? I’m not.”

“Okay, Stanley, it is I, Charles Johnson, who’s looking at the picture. I’m also looking at my real car!”

Charlie gestured out the window where he was looking at his car on the driveway. Stanley walked over and drew the blinds.

“Ok, I get the picture!”

“Very good, Charlie. So, when I asked you to think of your car, you created a mental picture of your car and looked at it. Is that right?”

“Uhhh … yep!”

“So, the mind must be a huge storehouse of mental pictures of every experience, wouldn’t you say, Charlie?”

“Okay, I can go with that.”

“Can you remember your first kiss, Charlie?”

“Of course.” Charlie grinned.

“Any deaths in the family?” asked Stanley.

“Yeah, a grandmother and some pets.”

“Did you look at some mental pictures when I asked you that?”

“Okay, I get the point that the mind is made up of mental pictures,” Charlie said getting slightly irritated.

“Would you agree then that it was you who looked at them?”

“Yes, yes, yes, I looked at the pictures, okay?” Charlie noticed a bit of a mischievous gleam in Stanley’s eyes.

“So, Charlie, if you looked at the pictures, that would imply that you were separate from the picture, for if you were not separate, that would imply you are the picture, would it not?”

“Uh, yep, I would be separate from the picture.”

“Well Charlie, if that’s so, then we’ve proved you exist separate from your mind, and that you can think and look and contemplate, have we not?”

“Damn, that seems so obvious!”

“All truth seems to be that way, simple. It’s getting at the truth that is sometimes complicated, directly proportional to the lies piled on top. So it seems the mind, body, and spirit boys have a better concept.”

“I can go with that.”

“Psychiatry and psychology, however, are traitors to both fields. The prefix Psych means spirit or soul and -iatry means healer of and –ology means study of. So, Charlie, can you see the fraud when they claim man is not a spirit?”

“That’s like saying man doesn’t think, look nor contemplate. They discredit science when they peddle lies in its name. When I hear that man is just a mind and body without a looker, thinker, and contemplator, I feel a little bile rise up in my throat at the shallowness of such ‘thinking.’”

Stanley stood and walked to the bathroom. He didn’t close the door and Charlie could hear him peeing. “Sounds like a race horse,” mumbled Charlie.

“If it weren’t for their mastery of deception and lies called public relations and propaganda, I believe they would be relegated to an old minstrel show called the village idiots at best and prison if justice prevailed.”

“Come on, Stanley, they don’t all think like that. Some are studying the brain for insights into mental problems and such.”

“Oh, you’re impressed with the brain boys, are you? Well, once again it’s perfectly obvious from all scientific tests ever done that the brain is just a switchboard between the two opposite but parallel universes. Calling it anything more would be as wrong as Galen calling the heart anything but a blood pump.”

“Then what’s the other universe?”

“Good question, Charlie. Well, let’s see, it would be the opposite of the physical universe. Have you heard of anti-matter, Charlie?”

“I saw something about that on the science channel. I believe they were thinking black holes might be made up of anti-matter.”

“Yes, some physicists made that silly statement
, until a less glib scientist pointed out that black holes couldn’t be anti-matter simply because they had a location and occupied space. They were not opposite, and to be anti-matter, it would have to be opposite.”

Stanley continued.

“So, the opposite of the physical universe would be no matter, no particle, no energy, no space, no location, and no persistence through time, and yet it would exist!”

“That’s impossible, Stanley!”

“Oh, really? Well, earlier when I asked you to think of your car, you created a mental picture, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“That mental picture existed, didn’t it? And yet it has no matter, no weight, no location, no space, and it vanishes when you aren’t thinking of it, so no time.”

Charlie cocked an eyebrow. “Who are you, Stanley?”

“Simple and totally obvious.” 

“So, Stanley, if I got this right, a thought is the opposite of the physical universe.”

“That was my first thought, but then I realized that the thought was being created in the thinker’s universe. I then wondered if it was the thought or the thinker who was opposite.”

“If a thought is anti-matter how come physical things don’t disappear when you think of them? I don’t get it.” said Charlie.

“It is consciousness itself, awareness, that nothingness that can suddenly envision something, that is the cause,” Stanley said with certainty.

Charlie made the cross-eyed face.

“Okay, Charlie, think of a black cat with four white feet and a white tip on its tail. Can you do that?”

“Of course, okay, I have created a black cat with four white feet and a white tip to its tail,” Charlie said with irritation.

“Okay, good. Now we both have a picture of the same black cat, do we not?” asked Stanley.

“We do!” agreed Charlie.

“We created that cat, right?”

“Um … right.”

“Were words the tool used to create that cat? Words like black, white, tail, and feet?” asked Stanley.

“Yeah.”

“Now for us to create that mutual cat, we had to have the same definitions of the words used to do that. Is that right, Charlie?”

“Righto again, Stanley.”

“So, we created a cat in a mutual universe. We now have a common reality in a third universe, the universe of Charlie and Stanley.”

“Okay, I get it. I have a universe, you have a universe, and we have a universe.”

“Good, now it stands to reason that every human being creates in their own and others universes. So it could be said that we are all creators. Is that too unreasonable?” asked Stanley.

“I guess not.”

“Okay, then it follows that since we’re all different, that if you lined all of us up and put a creato-meter on us one at a time that one would be more creative than any other, right?”

“Right.”

“What is the word that means the very best?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Charlie said.

“Supreme, right? So how would a supreme being create a universe?”

“This is getting interesting, Stanley.”

“It is interesting, especially since the bible said, ‘In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.’”

“I don’t understand exactly what that means, Stanley.”

“It means exactly what it says, Charlie. Just think about this. In the pursuit of the knowledge of life and the physical universe, scientists and philosophers look back in time, obviously. They couldn’t research the future as it hasn’t arrived yet. So there’s a lot of stuff to analyze today but there was a bit less yesterday, in as much as there is so much expanding and multiplying going on. Some of the top physicists think that the physical universe goes back to the ultimate simple one big bang that started it all.”

“Yeah, the ‘big bang’ evolution, and all that.”

“Now, think about that, Charlie. Look how shortsighted the brainy boys are. For a big bang to occur, there must have been a location in space to go boom in, right?”

Charlie raised an eyebrow.

“That’s right, Charlie, location and space are part of the physical universe, so there had to be a partial universe here already-and who created it?”

Charlie stood, and walked over to his tattered green recliner and sat down heavily. He stretched out and looked at the old popcorn ceiling. Old ceilings were as annoying as old friends sometimes. Both were needed. Charlie was just glad ceilings couldn’t talk.

“There is only one logical answer that can be extrapolated from this.”

“Whoa, Stanley, what is extrapolated?”