CHAPTER 6

This secret society decided to adopt and frame the idea of a limited reality.  This was at a “time” when all beings understood that reality was something that any individual could create and uncreate very easily.

So limited reality was kind of a new thing.

It was interesting.

It was an experiment.

What would happen if a being with unlimited powers of imagination and creativity decided to live in limited reality?

Some beings wanted to try.  Other beings were sold on the idea by RD.

Gradually, RD became more prominent.

As you can see, a great deal of self-delusion was necessary to make limited reality popular.

A loose analogy: the greatest car mechanic in the universe is driving on a desert highway.  His car breaks down.  He goes to the trunk and takes out his tools.  There is absolutely nothing that can go wrong with this car that he can’t fix.  But in this case, he convinces himself that he can’t find out what’s wrong with the car and that he’s stuck in the desert.  Stuck.

Eventually, he gives himself a new name: HE WHO IS STUCK IN THE DESERT.

“That’s my name.  I’m here in this great expanse, and I can’t get out.”

Later on, he gives himself another name: HE WHO LIVES IN THE DESERT.

“This is who I am.  This is where I come from.”

From that point of view, he tries to figure out his origins.  He settles on a theory that life evolves, EVOLVES, from sand and cactus.

“That explains it.  The sand got wet one day and out of the dirt crawled a sand doofus.  It was the first life form.  Over the millennia, it got smarter and bigger.  Finally, it looked like me.”   

RD has some observers in the area.  They watch this guy come up with his theory of evolution and they fall down laughing.

“Hey, this is good.  Let’s promote it everywhere.  Life evolved from sand.  Let’s build centers of learning that teach this.”

In another desert, another guy who broke down and found himself with no ride thought of something else: “Once there were gods of the sun.  They were in charge of heat and cold.  There came a time when the balance was thrown off because the daughter of one of the sun gods sneezed and drove the cold away in the middle of the great night.  So the sun was too hot, and her brother decided he would put his body between the sun and the little people who lived on the sand.  He burned up, but he lasted long enough to save the little folk…”

RD liked this one too.  They set up churches to teach it.

Then one of the RD honchos came up with a more complex plan.  “Let’s pit these two ‘schools of thought’ against each other.  You know, a centuries-long battle.  Lots of journal papers and pronouncements and debates.  A few wars.  Bloodshed.  The sand doofus versus the kid who stood in front of the sun.  That way we divert all of them from realizing the whole deal is a complete con job.  They’re too busy trying to win the argument.”

Over succeeding centuries, the car that broke down in one of the deserts keeps deteriorating.  It becomes, depending on the point of view, “a clue to the mysterious facts of life in the completely mysterious cosmos” or “a shrine built by unknown ancestors to commemorate the kid who blocked the sun.”

RD floats another con: “All historical arguments and oppositions give birth to new syntheses, and out of these syntheses comes the shining proposition that no one owns anything and the ‘the little people’ collectively own everything.  Through this new system, all problems can be solved once and for all.”

They fall down laughing over that one, too.