Pantodragon’s world in a nutshell.

[pantodragon]

In a nutshell: to the best of my understanding we live in a virtual world created for us by beings whose function is to do just that, just as our function is to live in the world. The relationship is symbiotic and one to one, one human existing in symbiosis with one ‘Quew’.

There is no physical reality, but what does exist are ‘souls’, ‘spirits’, and thoughts (and possibly other things too; I’m not really clear on this as yet). Such a world is not ordered according to laws and mathematics as the ‘physical’ world is supposed to be, but is ordered in a manner more consistent with its make-up: it is ordered according to ‘meaning’; ie it has more in common with stories, with art and fiction than with science.

To put it another way: the world of our experience is the ‘manifestation’ of our thoughts and those of the Quew.

In order to maintain this existence there is constant, uninterrupted communication between humans and Quews. This is largely through dreams. The dreams one experiences in one’s sleep are communications from the Quew, while the dreams produced by one’s own mind are sent TO the Quew. But these dreams are happening all the time, day and night; it is just that one is not normally conscious of them.

Communication can also occur through the external world. When I say that life is a virtual reality, I could equally accurately say that it is a DREAM. It then makes sense when I say that all of life, every aspect of our existence, is interpretable like a dream, and so communication can take place by virtually any means one can think of, including interpreting the events of one’s life, or by using tarot or oracle cards, by interpreting signs and portents, even by using ouija boards --- anything will do.

There is no such thing as ‘death’ in the sense of complete extinction. The soul and spirit are eternal. ‘Death’ occurs when people are no longer capable, for one reason or another, of maintaining life. Then one is reborn, giving one a fresh start. People should be capable of immortality, but it requires excellent health and a well-developed mind. That we become ill and age is because we are not capable of sustaining life. This situation need not continue.

The ‘story’ of one’s life is determined by one’s dreams and ambitions. These are communicated to the Quew whose job it then is to arrange our lives for us in such a way as to lead to the fulfilment of those dreams. That life currently falls short of this ideal is for the same reason as we currently die.

This gives a VERY brief account of how I understand the world. It is intended as nothing more than to let anyone who is interested (and some have asked) know where I am coming from.

Inevitably, whenever I give such an account of myself I get challenged to ‘prove’ what I ‘claim’. This attitude comes from the world of science and philosophy and is out of kilter with the ‘meaningful’ world I have described, but to explain why this is so would require me to go much too far into the details, would require me to write a sizable volume --- actually, there is a sizable volume in the pipeline. Actually, I hope it will not be ‘a sizable’ volume; getting the whole thing down to manageable proportions and into everyday language is what I aspire to.

However, I can give some account of how I work, of my method.

I adopt a position of ‘extreme naivety’. This means that I rely on the assumption that ‘Nature’ did not play some nasty trick on me by endowing me with ‘senses’ that would ‘lie’ to me. I assume that Nature did its best for me, that it endowed me with all that I need in order to understand and live successfully in the world.

(This is diametrically opposed to Descartes, who adopted a position of extreme doubt and scepticism and ended up at the position of being able to accept nothing but his own existence --- not very practical.)

‘Extreme naivety’ means that I trust my senses. So the grounds for my ‘beliefs’ are the evidence of my own senses. (I also trust other people, barring outright lies. So, if someone told me they had a tiger in their garden, and even if I went to that garden and could see no tiger and yet the other person maintained that the tiger was there, I would believe them. Virtual reality allows for this sort of thing because the ‘truth’ lies below the surface.)

I have not worked in any systematic way nor according to any rules. Indeed, when I set out I had no idea where I would end up. To get an idea of the mind-set, and the ‘philosophy’ in so far as it goes, you might look to the past, or to Eastern traditions: the Cook Islanders, when setting out to cross vast tracts of water without any means of navigation, would not say that they were ‘going to another island’, but that ‘the island would come to them’. In many Eastern religions, Buddhism, Hinduism etc you will find statements like this: when the pupil is ready the teacher appears. Similarly, I wait and things come to me.

One might then query thus: so you, pantodragon, have developed a view of the world that is peculiar to yourself, and that requires that you call all the religions, not to mention ‘science’, a lie, and the scientific method false. This sounds very like you consider yourself to be the only sane person in an insane world. Surely that is not a tenable position.

That thought did cause me a lot of trouble at the beginning. However, I was ‘exploring’, and I found a path, and I followed it and in the end I began to see that it was leading me to a place from where I could understand far more than science could ever do. It is a place where everything in the world makes sense. There is not a thing I cannot understand, and that includes science and why it has ‘happened’ and what it means. That is not to say that I have got it all under my belt as yet, at least, not in detail --- it is a rather big job, but I have got the basic overview and much besides.

I could put it this way: I have discovered the fabled ‘Aleph’, the singular point from which the whole world can be seen, present and past.

The rest of the ‘evidence’ is, as this world view itself is, rather personal, and concerns health and expectations and abilities and dreams and such. I can say, for example, that I have cured autism, and schizophrenia and depression and paranoia and lots of other mental illnesses and lots of physical illnesses besides, but why should you believe me? Do I even WANT you to believe me? Actually, no I don’t. It is more important that you have faith in YOURSELF than that you have faith in me, or anyone else, for that matter.

But that does not mean that it is not ‘healthy’ to air one’s beliefs and to discuss them and argue over them. For one thing, beliefs can evolve and change --- and I have no problem with that --- but they will not do so if you seal yourself in a hermetic bubble.

I place little importance on belief because I place it instead on ‘ability’. One’s mind need not, and should not, ever stop developing, and as one’s senses become better developed and the abilities involved in thinking and understanding become more advanced, one’s view of the world becomes more accurate – this is rather like being an eternal child. One does not expect a young child to have a very accurate understanding of the world (one even tolerates and encourages a belief in Santa Claus), but one expects that it will develop as the child grows.

So, again, the importance of these forums, as I see it, is in the argument and discussion, not in the conversion to other beliefs. Even the one-liner attacks and counter-attacks are good. That is rather like a mental form of martial arts: you may have noticed, for example, that a ‘move’ I favour is to ‘roll with the punches’, ie, to agree with the attack and then turn it around in some way. Another thing I will often do is ‘withdraw from enemy territory’. Every good general knows that you don’t allow yourself to be drawn onto enemy territory!


PS For those who may not yet have encountered this idea:

Even in modern science it is accepted that we ‘experience’ a virtual reality. When I ‘see’ an object, what happens is that an image of the object forms on the retina of my eye, the information is then coded in an electrical signal which is sent to the brain. The brain then uses that electrical signal to RECONSTRUCT the experience of seeing. In other words, the brain acts like a virtual reality generator which uses the information sent from all our senses to construct a VIRTUAL world, and it is this virtual world that we experience. If you could take a person’s brain out of the body and sustain it alive in a jar, and if you were to connect wires up to the nerve ends and send the appropriate signals down the nerve ends and into the brain, the brain would construct a virtual reality for you, and you would be unable to tell that you were not experiencing the ‘real’ world. Does the ‘real’ world exist?

[Dave B]

Big nut there!

What ever you believe is up to you, panto, I will settle for the reality that I (at least seem to) experience every day. I will also settle for the scientific basis for the Universe (as far as we know it.) If this turns out to be a living fallacy then so bet it. I have enough to occupy my brain as it is!

[thundril]

Hi Pantodragon. Some interesting poetic ideas here. You say you're working them up into something like whole coherent structure. Have you considered building a web-site, where you can let interested readers have input into the work-in-progress? (e make comments, suggestions, constructive criticism, etc)
If you have already got a site, would you make a link to it for us?

[Lifelinking]

I'll take da blue pill

[anaconda]

I stopped when you realised you knew 'far more than science could'. Good for you if that's the way you go, and i do admire your imagination, but if I wanted David Icke popped on steroids I'd go feed David Icke some ...er....steroids.

You're own website would be good. You've already been dismantled here, point by point, to which you responed lika a child. Much of this is repetition.

I also sense a hugely inflated sense of self worth. You seem completely comfortable talking about/congratulating yourself at length, and display quite a distorted perspective. Placing this with your nappy filling overreaction to criticism, your negative and odd comments towards human cooperation takes me to Jon Ronsons book, i think it was called Searching for Psychopaths.

[Alan H]

Placing this with your nappy filling overreaction to criticism, your negative and odd comments towards human cooperation takes me to Jon Ronsons book, i think it was called Searching for Psychopaths.

Are you thinking of The Psychopath Test? Got a signed copy, but not had time to read it yet.

[anaconda]

That's the one. An interesting read particularly Americans use/abuse of a set of personality traits and personal qualities to identify psychopaths. There are some very interesting examples - people showing these characteristics to be a continuum rather than obviously polarised. There's no demonisation of the mega powerful which I was half expecting.

[animist]

I get the impression that you have read about Pantalaimon and daemons in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials"

http://hdm.wikia.com/wiki/Pantalaimon

[pantodragon]

If you all admired me on the basis of what I have written above, you will absolutely fall in love with me if you read the 2 I've posted today!!!!

The websites are something I am working towards. Members of this forum have already ferreted out what may be found by googling "pantodragon". That was an exercise in creating a suite of websites along the lines that have been suggested by thundril. However, there are still a number of problems to be solved before I can get to where I want to be.

[pantodragon]

I get the impression that you have read about Pantalaimon and daemons in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials"

http://hdm.wikia.com/wiki/Pantalaimon

Yes, I've read the books. The relationship between them and my ideas would need some explanation beyond what I am prepared to go into here. However, if you are assuming my ideas have been based in any way of said books, you would be wrong.

[Dave B]

The nut is back out of the shell . . .

[animist]

so, Panto, what would you call the link between human and Quew - a Quew Bridge?

[Fia]

and there's doubtless forbidden fruit in Quew Gardens

Why Quew Panto? Have you been taking 'Star Trek: Next Generation" a tad seriously? (for non-afficionados there is a time and shape shifting character called Q who causes much merry mayhem).

Sorry to disillusion you but he's just a figment of imagination.

[Alan H]

Sorry to disillusion you but he's just a figment of imagination.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dave B]

This concept of the "fabled Aleph" is quite Quewt as well. Didn't know that the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (- and there yer go, "alpha" comes from "aleph" and "beta" from "beth" the second letter in Hebrew/Phoenician) was so important - other than as interest to those with an interest in the history of alphabets. (Added - and young Hebrew speaking school kids of course.)

Got a couple of good books on this . . .

[Alan H]

Finally, some evidence for your hypothesis, pantopuppy...

[Dave B]

[pantodragon]

Finally, some evidence for your hypothesis, pantopuppy...

]

If there's a serious point here, and there is, one which has flumoxed philosophers up to the present day, it is: if life is just a dream, why is it so awful? The answer is: you are paying the price of jerking YOURSELVES around. If you behave badly, you pay the price. In this context, bad is synonymous with unhealthy. In this world, morality and health are synonymous. It actually makes it a very good world, a utopian world, but if you will succumb to an addiction to power, which you have done, then you b****r it all up. You in fact destroy your own mind in such a way as to prevent the proper working of the virtual reality system.

[Dave B]

Finally, some evidence for your hypothesis, pantopuppy...

]

If there's a serious point here, and there is, one which has flumoxed philosophers up to the present day, it is: if life is just a dream, why is it so awful? The answer is: you are paying the price of jerking YOURSELVES around. If you behave badly, you pay the price. In this context, bad is synonymous with unhealthy. In this world, morality and health are synonymous. It actually makes it a very good world, a utopian world, but if you will succumb to an addiction to power, which you have done, then you b****r it all up. You in fact destroy your own mind in such a way as to prevent the proper working of the virtual reality system.

As usual, Pants, you are making generalisations that may have not bearing on the real world - only on your experience of it. I know people who are having a lovely time, especially in retirement after a life-time of working for a living, some in "posh" jobs, some as engineering shop floor workers. Most people "make" their own lives, I agree, but many of them are fairly content in my experience. Ill or good health can be a lottery, I know of two people who lived a very healthy life, eating the right foods, not drinking much, never been smokers and getting lots of exercise, who still had their heart attacks between 50 & 60.

[pantodragon]

As usual, Pants, you are making generalisations that may have not bearing on the real world - only on your experience of it. I know people who are having a lovely time, especially in retirement after a life-time of working for a living, some in "posh" jobs, some as engineering shop floor workers. Most people "make" their own lives, I agree, but many of them are fairly content in my experience. Ill or good health can be a lottery, I know of two people who lived a very healthy life, eating the right foods, not drinking much, never been smokers and getting lots of exercise, who still had their heart attacks between 50 & 60.

Firstly, you defy common sense: if somebody dies between the age of 50 and 60, then they have NOT lead a healthy life --- it doesn't matter what science says, if they die young, then they have not lead a healthy life. By talking of lotteries, scientists merely wriggle and squirm to maintain their theories in the face of contrary evidence, or they are, in effect, admitting the failure of science.

But secondly: it is FEAR that makes people PRETEND that they are content with their lives/jobs. This world is rotten and people's lives are rotten and part of the rottenness is the fear. People live in fear and are afraid to speak their discontent in case they lose their jobs or whatever. Anyone who is not experiencing fear is someone who has taken refuge in a cage and has grown to love the feeling of safety and security that offers.

My comment concerned the efforts of philosophers; many of them have acknowledged the ghastliness of our world and have tried to account for it, though none successfully. Most religions have also faced this truth and tried to deal with it. Buddhism for example exhorts its followers to abandon all desire because they ascribe the ills of this world to unasuagable desire. One of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism is: life means suffering.