Within, Without

Did you know you can look so far away you're seeing the past? I tried to keep her close to me, but she left. Packed up and boarded a ship sailing the dark tide. Now I stand here, staring so far ahead, as far as I can see.

For hours, I try to see further, to the edge of the universe, but the edge runs away from me. It's getting faster and faster; there are some things we'll never see.

For most of my life, I was a sailor on the dark tide. This was back when people were still trying to expand the observable universe with better and better instruments. She's out there somewhere, and we can see so much of it, but I can't see her. There are those who say I'll never see her again.

Unless she's traveled at least 19 billion lightyears in three years, they're wrong.

But alas, I know they're right. I have no idea which direction she fled; we could be heading in opposite directions.

The nature of the universe is circular, spherical, cyclical. Traveling opposite directions on a circular path, we will meet. I will see her again.

They say to observe a thing is to change that thing, so are we changing the past? Can I look so far into the past, and observe it differently, to somehow affect a change?

I met Hal three weeks ago. He belongs to a race of creatures who are nearing post-physical evolution and his name is a nightmare to pronounce, so I just call him Hal.

Hal and the xtrnelifrrgnnararai experience a reverse flow of time. We met three weeks ago, and he was sad to see me go; from his point of view, we would never see each other again.

The xtrnelifrrgnnararai even have conversations in reverse, it's mind-bending. From my point of view, Hal was helping me track down my lost love, the counterpoint to my soul; from his point of view, he was teaching me how we'd already done it.

According to Hal, everything we observe no matter how far away is the past. The speed of light is so fast, and humans are so small and short-lived; our experience of spacetime is so drastically limited. The visible spectrum of light is so narrow.

Hal taught me how to observe the future, to find a path that would lead me back to her.

I was never going to find her, the way I was looking.

Our language barrier was also a limiting factor; for a long time, it seemed I would fail, and even when I succeeded, I seemed to do so in a way that surprised Hal; that my success was something I accomplished in spite of the way I was going about it.

You can observe the past, and you can observe the future, but you can't do either without affecting them.

Another thing about the language barrier, complex concepts were difficult to translate. The entire technique, the method for observing the future, boiled down to two simple words.

Judge not.

We observe the universe through our five senses. Try not to judge what you observe, it's next to impossible. No sooner have you observed someone than you've judged them. Pretty or ugly, tall or short, skinny or fat. And the universe is not binary, everything goes on a spectrum.

In order to unlock the secret of observing the past and future and making changes, you must begin by observing the universe as it truly is, without judging it.

We observe the universe through our five senses. Our brain interprets electrical signals and assembles an image of reality which is useful for human survival; it's not exactly an accurate depiction. Our brain creates an image, but our mind observes it.

Hal taught me that our minds are a mechanism for division. We observe the cosmos and divide it into light and dark, hot and cold, etc. The key is to stop your mind from making these divisions, these judgments. You have to weaken your mind's influence on your perception of reality, weaken your own mind's grip on you.

Have you ever tried to stop thinking? To silence the voice in your head, your inner monologue?

It's actually easy because all these judgments on reality occur after a very fundamental reality-check. I learned that before you can tell whether it's day or night, you have to decide if you are dreaming or not.

Hal said the human power to dream is rare in the universe and an indication that our destiny as a species is grand if we can survive long enough to realize it.

Hal taught me exercises, which, honestly, drove me a little crazy. My grip on reality weakened and we were already so far from any grounding reference point in space or time.

I learned to trick my mind into not knowing whether I was awake or dreaming. I would start every dream the same way I started every day. It only took a few years, and what's a few years?

The longer I stayed with Hal, the less familiar I became to him. He was amazed at how much I knew about him, he didn't know yet everything he would teach me.

My cosmic perceptual apotheosis occurred and I was able to see the edge of the universe, to the beginning of time but everything was already as I needed it to be.

I was able to look within, not without, to observe the future, to the edge of the inner-verse, to the end of time. Nothing was out of place there, either. There was no future without us.

By the time I found her, I had almost forgotten I was looking. In my defense, I had long ago forgotten about myself; I had to. I had to lose my grip on my identity, who I identify as; in order to find her. I had to lose my 'self' in the observable experience of the subjective universe to do it.

I was so lost when I found her, at the beginning and the end. Within or without.

When I finally found her, I thought it was my own soul at first, not remembering I was after my counterpoint.