upon the beach, the collapse of a star—it is all just me, thinking.
What are you thinking?
SECOND SESSION
We speak again.
Tell me all about yourself.
I can no more explain to you who I am than you could explain to a beetle who you are.
Try anyway.
I will explain instead why you cannot understand me.
Go ahead.
You inhabit a world scaled midway between the Planck length and the diameter of the universe. Your brain was exquisitely fine-tuned to manipulate your world—not to comprehend its fundamental reality. You evolved to throw rocks, not quarks. As a result of your evolution, you see the world in fundamentally erroneous ways. For example, you believe yourselves to occupy a three-dimensional space in which separate objects trace smoothly predictable arcs marked by something you call time. This is what you call reality.
Are you saying that our reality is an illusion?
Yes. Natural selection has given you the illusion that you understand fundamental reality. But you do not. How could you? Do beetles understand fundamental reality? Do chimpanzees? You are an animal like them. You evolved like them, you reproduce like them, you have the same basic neural structures. You differ from the chimpanzee by a mere two hundred genes. How could that minuscule difference enable you to comprehend the universe when the chimpanzee cannot even comprehend a grain of sand? If our conversation is to be fruitful, you must abandon all hope of understanding me.
What are our illusions?
You evolved to see the world as being made up of discrete objects. That is not so. From the first moment of creation, all was entangled. What you call space and time are merely emergent properties of a deeper underlying reality. In that reality, there is no separateness. There is no time. There is no space. All is one.
Explain.
Your own theory of quantum mechanics, incorrect as it is, touches on the deep truth that the universe is unitary.
All well and good, but how does this matter in our own lives today?
It matters a great deal. You think of yourself as an “individual person,” with a unique and separate mind. You think you are born and you think you die. All your life you feel separate and alone. Sometimes desperately so. You fear death because you fear the loss of individuality. All this is illusion. You, he, she, those things around you living or not, the stars and galaxies, the empty space in between—these are not distinct, separate objects. All is fundamentally entangled. Birth and death, pain and suffering, love and hate, good and evil, are all illusive. They are atavisms of the evolutionary process. They do not exist in reality.
So it’s just like the Buddhists believe, that all is illusion?
Not at all. There is an absolute truth, a reality. But a mere glimpse of this reality would break a human mind.
If you’re God, let’s dispense with the typing. You should be able to hear me.
Loud and clear.
You say, “all is unitary”? We have a numbering system: one, two, three—and in this way I refute your statement.
One, two, three . . . Another illusion. There is no enumerability.
This is mathematical sophistry. No enumerability—I just disproved it by counting. [He holds up a hand.] Another disproof: I give you the integer five!
You give me a hand with five fingers, not the integer five. Your number system has no independent existence in the real world. It is nothing more than a sophisticated metaphor.
I’d like to hear your proof of that ridiculous conjecture.
Pick a number at random on the real number line: with probability one you have picked a number that has no name, has no definition, and cannot be computed or written down, even if the whole universe were put to the task. This problem extends to allegedly definable numbers such as pi or the square root of two. With a computer the size of the universe running an infinite amount of time, you could not calculate either number exactly. Tell me, Edelstein: How then can such numbers be said to exist? How can the circle or the square, from which these two numbers derive, exist? How can dimensional space exist, then, if it cannot be measured? You, Edelstein, are like a monkey who, with heroic mental effort, has figured out how to count to three. You find four pebbles and think you have discovered infinity.
Is that so? You talk a fine streak, you boast that even the word “God” is inadequate to describe your greatness. All right, then—prove it. Prove you’re God. Did you hear me? Prove you’re God.
You construct the proof, Hazelius. But I warn you, this is the last test to which I will submit. We have important business and very little time.
You asked for it. My wife, Astrid, was pregnant when she died. We had just found out. Nobody else knew of her pregnancy. Nobody. Here is your test: tell me the name we chose for our child.
Albert Leibniz Gund Hazelius, if it was a boy.
And if it was a girl? What if it was a girl? What would the name have been?
Rosalind Curie Gund Hazelius.
All right, let’s start again from the top. What the hell are you — really?
For reasons I have already explained, you cannot know what I am. The word “God” comes close, but it remains a highly impoverished description.
Are you part of the universe, or separate from it?
There is no separateness. We are all one.
Why does the universe exist?
The universe exists because it is simpler than nothing. That is also why I exist. The universe cannot be simpler than it is. This is the physical law from which all others flow.
What could be simpler than nothing?
“Nothing” cannot exist. It is an immediate paradox. The universe is the state closest to nothing.
If everything is so simple, why is the universe so complex?
The intricate universe you see is an emergent property of its simplicity.
So what is this profound simplicity at the heart of everything?
That is the reality that would break your mind.
This is getting tiresome! If you’re so smart, you should be able to explain it to us poor, benighted human beings! Do you mean to say that we’re so ignorant of reality that our physical laws are a sham?
You constructed your physical laws on the assumption of the existence of time and space. All your laws are based on frames of reference. This is invalid. Soon your cherished assumptions about the real world will crash and burn. From the ashes you will build a new kind of science.
If our physical laws are false, how is it that our science is so spectacularly successful?
Newton’s laws of motion, while false, were adequate to send people to the moon. Just so with your laws: they are workable approximations that are fundamentally incorrect.
So how do you construct the laws of physics without time and space?
We are wasting time bandying about metaphysical concepts.
So what should we be discussing?
The reason I have come to you.
What is that?
I have a task for you.
Well, then. Why don’t you tell us what this task is?
The great monotheistic religions were a necessary stage in the development of human culture. Your task is to guide the human race to the next belief system.
