The Adventure

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ADVENTURES IN REALITY, 1471 Marshall-Petaluma Rd., Petaluma, CA 94952.

Summary

Meaningful coincidences pose a scientific puzzle that is solved by recognition that we create physical facts in the same way that we create dream images. In this new paradigm:

• The physical universe is not objective. It is projective. As a movie projector projects images onto a screen, our minds project facts into reality.
• What we call "objective" is collective. Physical "objects" are collective projections. The laws of nature are collective projections.
• In the physical world, as in dream worlds, meaning is the material of which matter is made.
• Physical facts, like dream images, can be interpreted.
• The interpretation of realities, like the interpretation of dreams, can free us from recurring private and public nightmares and release creative powers.
• Just as a single dream image can express many different ideas, so a single physical fact can express the ideas of many different people ("overdetermination").
• An overdetermined fact can express both private and collective thoughts, and can express both conscious and unconscious thoughts.
• Just as an individual can be the creator, the hero, and the interpreter of a dream world, so each individual is the creator, the hero, and the interpreter of the universe.
• An individual who recognizes that he or she is the creator-hero-interpreter of the universe knows his or her own infinite worth.
• An individual who knows his or her own infinite worth knows the infinite worth of every other individual.
• Anyone who knows the infinite worth of every individual will not insert a bayonet or bullet or bombshell into the intestines of an "enemy."
• In a universe recognized as projective, our "enemies" can be recognized as projections of our own unconscious selves.
• In the next civilization, the nightmare of war will be replaced by awakening to the human adventure of creating, exploring, explaining, enjoying, sharing, and re-creating the universe.

How are coincidences caused? By a god? By chance?

THE ADVENTURE dismisses the god-hypothesis as a betrayal of human intelligence. Just as a god-hypothesis is not needed to explain how automobiles move and lightning strikes, so a god-hypothesis is not needed to explain how coincidences are caused.

While no quantity of meaningful coincidences can prove – or disprove – the chance-hypothesis, the exquisite appropriateness of innumerable coincidences makes a mockery of "scientific" belief that they are produced by chance.

Until scientists examine the data of meaning with the same passionate honesty that they examine the data of mass and velocity, science will grotesquely distort our picture of nature. The "scientific" myth of a meaningless physical universe is one of the most destructive forces in the modern world.

THE ADVENTURE shows how the paradigm that explains meaningful coincidences will revolutionize science, religion, society, and personal life.

Current history is interpreted as collective dreams in chapters on the Middle East, the Big Bang and black holes, and the AIDS and Alzheimer’s epidemics.

Scientists’ irrational neglect of the data of meaning is traced to historical forces that shaped the Scientific Revolution of the 16th-17th centuries.

THE ADVENTURE’S final chapter outlines actions that individuals and nations can take to establish The Next Civilization.

Excerpt

Sample Data

In the summer of 1994, during moments of despondency, I indulged in fantasies of suicide. I was never close to acting out these escape fantasies ... but my imagination did choose a specific method. I imagined jumping off a cliff a few miles from my mountain home, a cliff above Diamond Lake. Then, in August, my dearest friend accidentally fell to his death from a cliff above Diamond Lake.

Mark fell at about 2 p.m. In the morning before his fall, a new friend arrived at my cabin for a short hike. Her mountain climber’s T-shirt displayed a diamond-shaped highway sign with this message:

CAUTION

LAW OF GRAVITY

STRICTLY ENFORCED

The friend wearing that sign had a very unusual first name: "Nature."

I had previously written, in the manuscript of my forthcoming book The Personal Universe: "To protect the extremely useful [collective] hallucination of natural laws, extremely powerful sanctions enforce those laws.… Someone who challenges the law of gravity may break his neck."

Lest I doubt that we create and enforce the laws of nature, Nature appeared, shortly before the law of gravity executed my friend, wearing the warning: "law of gravity strictly enforced."

Mark's death and Nature's T-shirt emphatically confirmed what I had previously written: "We not only dream natural laws into existence, we dream into existence powerful penalties for those who challenge those laws."

The timely appearance of Nature's T-shirt not only affirmed this principle, it was an example of the type of coincidental data that compel recognition that we create nature.

And the death of my dearest friend was a personal message to me, a powerful reminder that I must not let the loneliness of my work tempt me with suicide, an appalling reminder that I must not give up my work because recognition that we create nature is, for the whole world, a matter of life and death.

There were many other coincidences involved in Mark's death. For example, in May of the previous year, Mark and I had skied to Diamond Lake. We ate lunch on a rock in the middle of the frozen lake. Because it had begun to rain, we huddled together under my poncho. I remarked that the red poncho would be a good marker for rescuers in the event of an accident. When Mark accidentally fell to his death above Diamond Lake, before his brother ran to find rescuers he marked the spot with Mark's red poncho.

Three years later beside another mountain lake, during a raging thunderstorm, I had lunch huddled with another friend under my red poncho. That was the day, I learned later, on which my former wife died in Tehran.

These data are a combination of coincidences:

1. Location: My Diamond Lake suicide fantasy, then Mark’s fatal fall above Diamond Lake;
2. T-shirt / Timing: Warning about gravity on same day that gravity killed Mark;
3. T-shirt / Words: Repetition of my previously written words about enforcement of law of gravity;
4. Name: Message from Nature about nature’s laws;
5. Red Poncho: Previous remark about accident-marker, then brother’s use as accident-marker;
6. Red Poncho: Location of previous remark at Diamond Lake, the location of later accident;
7. Red Poncho: On day of wife’s death, again huddled with friend under poncho by mountain lake.

Combination: Each of these seven data, in itself, poses a scientific puzzle. Another fact must be added to this list. The COMBINATION of seven coincidences is an eighth coincidence.