“. . . We don’t know whether these rules preexist our universe . . .” (Karl Giberson)

The Golden Gate, Jerusalem. Ha Rachamim (Gate of Mercy). Built (perhaps) 810 AD, opened 1102 AD, closed 1540 AD to wait for the coming of the Messiah (Ezekiel 44:1-3). Reality? Why does it go to the bother? (Photo: Harold Knight, Nov. 2015)

For about a week I’ve been writing my magnum opus. I’m delving into everything I think/feel/believe about life, death, thought, unconsciousness, physical fitness, eating, making love, and generally being on the face of the earth. It will probably take me another day or two to finish it.

No, really. All of that stuff.

Should be quite a tome, don’t you think?

I started because I finally (after 60-70 years) got around to trying to write a description of my experience of what I’ve always called dissociation. The description asks in part,

I feel my brain. Physically. That gives me a weird sensation of awareness of my entire body — but especially my head — that makes it feel very close and real, but at the same time distant and as if I have no control over it. . . How am I supposed to do anything, accomplish anything, be close to anyone when I feel as if my mind and my body are at war with each other. These are the times I come the closest to wanting to die. Why can’t I just feel “normal?” Every cell in my body is tingling, but it’s as if someone else is feeling it, not me ― I am happening in someone else’s mind.

I’m right in the thick of my magnum opus. What do I think/feel/believe about life, death, thought, unconsciousness, and all of those other things?

Mostly I think none of it is real.

Turns out there are names for the way I think/feel/believe ― straight from the APA black book. When I read my description to my psychiatrist, she obliged me by opening the APA book handing it to me to read.

Depersonalization disorder is marked by periods of feeling disconnected or detached from one’s body and thoughts. The disorder is sometimes described as feeling like you are observing yourself from outside your body or like being in a dream. However, people with this disorder do not lose contact with reality. An episode of depersonalization can last anywhere from a few minutes to many years.

Derealization is a subjective experience of unreality of the outside world, while depersonalization is unreality in one’s sense of self. Although most authors currently regard derealization (surroundings) and depersonalization (self) as independent constructs, many do not want to separate derealization from depersonalization because these symptoms often co-occur. Feelings of unreality may blend in and the person may puzzle over deciding whether it is the self or the world that feels unreal to them.

Oh, and just to clarify what the black book says, depersonalization might be a symptom of other disorders, including some forms of substance abuse (√), certain personality disorders such as bipolar disorder (√), and seizure disorders (√).

So writing out what I think/feel/believe is quite simple.

Mostly, none of it is real.

I read a lot of weird shit. You know, about the Big Bang and all that stuff. Of course I read only dumbed-down science because I don’t know enough to read real science. The other day I read,

One thing we do know now about that mysterious beginning is that it proceeded according to a precise set of rules. We don’t know whether these rules preexist our universe. We just know that they are there “in the beginning” and that they constrain what can and cannot happen. (Karl Giberson, “Cosmos from Nothing?” Christian Century June 10, 2015.)

I’m not in the habit of reading Christian Century. I think if anyone knows what’s real and what’s not, it’s not likely to be someone writing in a journal with “Christian” in the name.

However, Giberson does ask some nifty questions like, “Why does the universe go to the bother of existing?” And in part of his discussion of that question, he says

Our remarkable universe is just the lucky one among stillborn trillions incapable of hosting life. In The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, cosmologist Brian Greene identifies no less than nine independent ways to produce an infinity of alternate worlds, any one of which can produce a universe like ours without a superintellect monkeying with the physics.

But Giberson is skeptical because, “A scientific drawback to these theories is that none of these posited realities have any empirical connection to our reality—at least at the present time.”

The sky over the Bedouin town of Sousia in Palestine. Why does it go to the bother? (Photo: Harold Knight, Nov. 2015)

All Giberson or Greene or any of those guys need to do to get a glimpse of the posited realities that have no empirical connection to our reality is find a way to experience what an epileptic experiences with regularity.

If what I feel, see, hear, smell, and taste is, in fact, happening to someone else and they don’t know it, does that reality have any empirical connection to our reality? Do I even have an empirical reality?

I know what you are thinking. I’m making up word games or something to try to explain a weirdness in my life for which no explanation is obvious and which is crazy-making to me (in the sense that it drives me crazy, not that I am crazy).

One thing we do know now about that mysterious beginning is that it proceeded according to a precise set of rules. We don’t know whether these rules preexist our universe.

We don’t know whether these rules preexist our universe. What if―just what if?―some of us are given a glimpse of the reality that nothing is real? What if it’s possible to live in a place where the reality we all take for granted slips away in “an episode of depersonalization [that] can last anywhere from a few minutes to many years?”

“Why does the universe go to the bother of existing?”

If I feel depersonalized, why should we assume that I’m the odd one? I may be the only one who has a grip on things, who knows there’s no grip to be had.

Mr. Descartes, doesn’t it make exactly as much sense to say, “I think, therefore I am not?”

Just sayin’.

The Damascus Gate, Jerusalem, built 1541. Entrance to the Old City. Arab Quarter. Why does it go to the bother? (Photo: Harold Knight, Nov. 2015)