Mistaken identity

We were on our way home from summer holidays, on a ferry; a midday crossing.

I’d been to bed late, packing the van, the night before, and we’d had to be on the road by 5am, so I was knackered.

I employed my ninja-level snoozing skills to good effect, curled up like a cat on one of the sofas, and in the middle of ship-deck bedlam, I was out like a light.

About 45 minutes later I resurfaced, groggily dragged myself to vertical, surveyed the teeming masses, and with real surprise saw my best friend walking towards me!

😮

(At this point, I should note that I hadn’t seen him for ages, he wasn’t on holiday with us and there was no real conceivable way he could have been there.)

And yet I saw him.

For about half a second.

And then of course it wasn’t him, just someone roughly the same height (he’s tall), with the same sort of glasses and wearing the same sorts of clothes he wears (we’re creatures of habit, us middle-aged men).

So did I see him, or not?

🤔

The obvious thing to say would be,

Of course not, Giles – it wasn’t him!

But at the same time, for that split second, I actually did have the exact same experience I have when he’s stood there, right in front of me.

Because I can’t experience my friend any other way than via the Principle of Thought (that you can think of as thought-perception, if it helps).

The mind creates an experience, using the data it has at its disposal (vibrating energy field that includes our thought system of experiences, conditioning, memory & beliefs) and delivers a ‘best guess’ at what must be happening, in order for those particular data to be being received.

So in my half-awake state, it’s not like I looked up and thought,

“Ooh, I wonder if that’s Si? Looks just like him! Could it…? Is it…? Naaaah.”

No, I literally saw him.

That was the ‘reality’ the mind created for me as it came round from blissful slumber and started taking data in through the eyes again.

And then a split second later, a bit more data came in, the ‘reality’ got updated and the poor chap I was gawping at morphed, as if by magic, back into not-Si… just some hapless geezer that happens to look like him.

And this is true for everything you perceive. It’s all ‘made up’ in this way. (It’s quite bonkers when you reflect on it.)

The screen you’re looking at right now – that’s just energy in the form of dots of light. Nobody in the Universe is having the same experience as you right now, because it’s your mind’s ‘best guess’ at what’s going on!

The experience is real—Hi 👋🏻 I’m waving at you right now, as I type this—but it’s not true. It’s a creation of the mind; a work of fiction.

Now I wonder if that has any implications for the rest of life at all???

🤯

Giles

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