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Cosmic Cartography

6 years ago1,429 words

I made a website a few months ago which was intended as a spiritual community, the primary aim of which would be to collaboratively sketch out the 'big picture' of the nature of life and the universe using diverse sources of objective and subjective evidence. I never got around to finishing it or making it public, but I want to show it here before my surgery in case the ~description of the universe~ that I've already written on it is of any interest to anyone.

Religion and spirituality have always been a big part of my life. I started off as a staunch atheist, arguing against the religious while remaining open-minded enough to wonder about an afterlife. It bothered me that other atheists were so quick to scoff at and dismiss supposedly transcendent phenomena like astral projection without even looking at them or giving them a chance, so I did explore them to see if they were real, what they were like. Later, I had a small taste of "enlightenment" as a result of exposure to spiritual ideas - though it was sadly short-lived - and since then I've read a lot about different people's perspectives on and experiences with aspects of the world beyond what science understands or accepts. Much of my creative work has been inspired by spiritual concepts; even MARDEK incorporated the 'dreamrealm', which was based on what I'd read about the actual nature of reality according to people who claimed they could astrally project.

Are you familiar with the story of the blind men and the elephant? Essentially, it's about several blind men who all come across an elephant for the first time, and feel different parts of it in order to understand its nature. One who feels the trunk compares it to a snake, one who feels the ear compares it to a fan, one who feels the leg compares it to a tree trunk, one who feels its side compares it to a wall, one who feels its tail compares it to a rope, etc. The point is that each of them has a very different interpretation based on their limited subjective experience, and if they stuck with just that experience, never exploring beyond where they began or listening to the other blind men, they'd never fully understand what an elephant was.

I feel that sticking with the rigid teachings of one religion is the same kind of thing. Religions typically claim that they have the full story about the nature of reality, but how can one be right while all others are wrong? It's more likely that either they're all wrong, or that they touch on aspects of one greater truth while inventing mythologies around missing details. Modern reductionist, materialist science would assert that the former is true - they're all wrong - but I think we'd be missing out to just leave it at that. To not investigate, to not explore what people who claim to have had profound, transcendent experiences say they've learned about what's outside everyday perception.

It's arrogant to claim that in our blindness, we understand what an elephant is. That in 2018, we've reached the pinnacle of our understanding of reality, with only a few details left to be ironed out. There might be parts of reality that science can't measure because nobody's built the right machines for that, or perhaps our senses or machines could never detect or measure them in the same way that characters in a video game can never perceive the player controlling them.

I don't know. I don't claim to have any answers. I've just been trying to regard everything with open-minded curiosity, to see if or how stories from different sources fit together.

It's so easy, and natural, when faced with evidence that clashes with our worldview, to home in on and eagerly accept any discoveries that debunk it, that reassure us that what we already believed isn't wrong. Anything that seems aberrant and 'impossible' according to the way we see the world is met with a sometimes hostile incredulity, while that same scepticism is restrained when a piece of evidence comes along that suggests that our worldview is comfortably correct after all. Creationists demand fossils of every transitional species before they accept evolution, but readily embrace a dodgy study that suggests that T Rexes might have eaten plants. Materialists scoff at the idea of Near Death Experiences as transcendent, but dismiss them easily when a study producing similar - if not quite identical - effects via drugs or brain stimulation provides the metaphorical tape they can use to seal that particular crack. And so on.

I know that, and I know that people who aren't already on board with the ideas I wanted to present on this new site would question them, tear them apart perhaps, and that - because I'm subject to this reluctance to shatter my own worldview too - it'd hurt, be stressful... Though the aim was discovery, unravelling the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything, I didn't want to dive straight into harsh debate, to have the castle I'd built be slammed with sledgehammers as soon as the drawbridge spanned the moat. It's why even though I made this new site three months ago, I'm only now linking to it, and I'm not opening it for joining just yet.

So to make that clear: I want to share what I've got, but I don't want the stress of having to debate about it just yet.

In time, the aim of the site would be to refine the "map of life" it presents, chopping bits out that evidence suggests are wrong, adding bits in that other accounts suggest. It'd be edited and changed continually, with each statement linking to a post which went into detail about where that particular idea came from.

At the moment, it's not like that, though. There's a description the 'map of life' page which is sort of the big picture I've cobbled together from all that I've seen and read, but it's a bit incoherent and I don't necessarily agree with all of it. Some things seem more like they'd be interesting in fantasy than the actual nature of existence.

Still, perhaps you'll find it interesting anyway.

The website is here, though it's read-only and you can't post; really the only thing of interest is this one page: [LINK]



However! When making websites (I say as if I do this all the time; I've made a few, but it's been a while), I'll typically test them by making a bunch of temporary accounts and having them post stupid things, sort of interact with each other, etc. Generally I'll just be completely absurd about it, just to amuse myself, and the results are seen by the eyes of few or no other people.

This time, I found the results of that testing amusing enough to keep in a special archive. It was made to entertain myself rather than an audience, so it's entirely pandering to my own tastes, but again, perhaps you'll get something out of it anyway.

If you're curious to see that, you can do so here: [LINK]

Unlike the 'proper' version of the site, the "Articles" page is more interesting than the Map of Life one. The articles have comments on them too.

Honestly, I enjoyed that enough for me to consider just doing something silly like that as a long-term thing, making a read-only 'community' website filled with ridiculous posts and silly users interacting among themselves. It seems like it could be an interesting, relatively unusual way of telling a story or building a world, but I don't know if it'd be appealing enough to other people to bother with. Maybe the novelty would wither away quickly, or it just wouldn't really be of a form that people would want to engage in or that I would want to keep making in the long-term. I don't know.



Anyway, I'm showing this off now just in case I don't make it through the surgery next week. I'm sure you all have your models of reality and that this won't agree with what you already understand of the universe, so I'm not expecting it to be embraced freely or anything. It is based on my exploration of these concepts beyond what anyone person or organised religion has taught me though, so maybe there's at least a bit of it that seems interesting to you.