Chapter Three: Abstract and Imaginary Sensory Information

"Learning is experience. Everything else is just information."
– Albert Einstein


"Cement!"

"Hmmm?" Einstein said turning in his chair, his glasses mounting the lower half of his nose.

"Cement!"

He took off his glasses and looked at me puzzlingly.

"I . .. uh . . umm . . well." I didn't want to tell him that I had done the best I could in repeating 'I intend to find my hands in my dreams' for two days and when the third day approached I couldn't stand it any longer and happenstancely, found a handprint in sidewalk and chucked the whole assignment.

"Come, come. Sit, sit."

He urged me to sit on the floor in a corner of his lab and then sat down on my left.

He nodded his head towards the window.

"It kills us so softly."

I looked at him puzzled.

"Look! Look at the light!"

Light streamed in through the window. A slow wind bustled a tree and created a very fluid like shadow that gave the light a kind of life. Dust floated all about and glistened endowing the room with a sense of eternity.

"The universe is so gentle with us. It kills us . . . so softly. " His hand motioned through thin air as if delicately caressing the light. “It takes what 80 - 90 years of looking at light to wear away the ability to see. And what? 60-70 years of hearing to make the ears ineffective. Certainly there are similar limits to touch, taste and smell."

We sat in silence for more than a few moments. I became uncomfortable and increasingly agitated. I began to wonder about what to say, why to say it and whether or not it was my own thoughts or the thoughts my father.

"Shhhh . . . Listen to your senses."

I heard cars driving by, a dull murmur of people talking on the street, birds chirping. I also felt the cold university tile floor and I ran my fingers along the wood grain of a cupboard.

"Your imagination is much more timid than I thought it was."

I was offended. His statement was preposterous and I wanted to tell him so. But somehow I quelled the desire and saw that my entire feelings of offense were stemmed from my father's insistence that I know arguments about knowledge back for forth. If I was truthfull with myself I had to admit that I didn't really know anything about the imagination.

"How did your attempt to find your hands in your dreams go?"

"I . . . uh. . ."

"You found cement."

I again wanted to reiterate my previously felt feelings on how great it was that I found a hand print in cement and how I wanted to tell him that this counted as evidence and that I would rather it not be treated this way. That I had a right to speak up for whatever purpose my imagination had and if taht was finding cement then so it shall be. But I was so flustered and unable to speak that I just sat there.

His took his mouth and did something very strange with it and it made me think that what I had just said was unblievable. I began again to speak aloud and I reiterated that imprinted cement could certainly be found by a future race of beings the very evidence we have of that exists in dinosaour footprints.

He took my mood for granted and talked to it.

"Oh, how interesting, but your mistaken. Perhaps concrete wouldn't exist in their time because the theory of concept compression-over-time says that when things get lost in time they don't appear to their finders as what they originally were. The context is gone. All we have is an artifact. For instance, the Greek Parthenon exists to us as the Greek Parthenon. But for them it whatever it was because there is no way for us to conceive of the entirety of the times they lived in. Concept degradation over time produces the oddest arrangement of artifacts and concepts that can only offer a literal interpretation. Historians can only report things. Archeaologists could only find things that already exist. Spermatologists could only exist as sperm whales.


I looked at him kinda curiosly but peeked like I didn't want him to continue his conjecture.

literally - 'This was literally found right next to the Parthenon. This was found in the Parthenon. The books of the time say this man was the leader of this time. This book says the Parthenon was built by so and so.'



"Now, to evolve this same problem into our present time I could ask permission of your mind to question, 'What if 20th century artifacts were all that were discovered by these future inconceivable peoples. What kind of paintings would they find? Pick three."

"Mark Rothko's 'Untitled, 1958'. Julian Schnabel's, 'Eight Hundred Blows'. And . . uh. . . . some unknown painter."

"Now, lets say that they never find a representation of what they consider art. Art in their times is whatever kind of B.S. art it is they have to deal with. Lets say they find something entirely different."

"Like what?"

"Like random collections of abstract sensory information"

"What is abstract sensory information?"

"It is sensory information that cannot be conceptualized."

"What?"

"Look."






"And Look at this one."






"You see, this Jackson Pollock, offers a sensory conviction to the viewer's senses without delivering a context, nor a means of interpretation, and certainly the painting gives no reference to the external world. On the other hand, Merit Oppenheim's 'Object' delivers a context, offers a very striking interpretation and references near infinite worlds! One is composed entirely of abstract sensory information, which is resistant to conceptualization, and the other offers definite concepts. Watch again."




"You are perceiving without conceptualizing! Your cognitive processes are halted just enough to allow your eyes to see without turning what you see into concepts. This is a highly unique situation! Look around you! Is there anything in this room that you perceive without conceptualizing?" I looked around the room and back again at the painting. He pointed to my feet - "Sneakers, shoelaces, eyelets and um . . . hmmm . . . Well!. What do you call this?" He grabbed the end of my shoelace pointing to its encased plastic tip. Somebody somewhere knows the name for this!" We both busted up laughing.

"You see to conceptualize abstract art work into the overgeneralization 'Art' is a huge downfall and misses the whole point of abstraction in art. What we have in abstract art is of very profound cognitive importance. Abstract art renders one's conceptualizing faculties unable to conceptualize because abstract art conveys sensory conviction without delivering 'understanding.' But we are dummies we don't know what that waht you are getting is the purest substance of abstraction. We are used to conceptualizing sensory information and then turning it into language and therefore were are able to ignore most if not all of the sensory information coming into our bodies by holding time with conceptual stillness a feat not achieved by to many cept humans onthis planet.. A simple glance at an object and we know what it is. The rest of the sensory details of the object are useless to us. We don't 'understand' Pollock's 'Blue Poles' because it is quite simply - abstract sensory information. And abstract sensory information allows one to perceive without 'knowing' what is they are perceiving. The only other time this occurred in our lives is when we were infants.

"Art scholars today and perhaps even some artists have a habit of making a willful linguistic interpretation of abstract art and miss its cognitive importance. Instead of conducting a cognitive examination of art scholars deliver prose like this.” He stood and began to orate - perfectly mimicking an old English accent and conveying a definitive authoritative scholarly tone - "By means of his interlaced trickles and spatters, Pollock created an oscillation between an emphatic surface - further specified by highlights of aluminum paint - and an illusion of indeterminate but somehow definitely shallow depth that reminds me of what Picasso and Braque arrived at thirty-odd years before . . . "

"Mr. Clement Greenberg is certainly responding to the abstract sensory information in a cognitive manner but he fails to realize the overall cognitive impact of abstract art is to render the conceptualizing faculties of mind a moment of pause. The Pollacks painting delivers sensory information in bulk form. He paused in silence for dramatic effect.

"Hence, little bits of abstract sensory information could be found at random by this future civilization and conceptualized and contextualized differently by them to accord to the consensus of the found artifacts. Let's say they find the Greek Parthenon, the Ancient wall of China, and a couple of airplanes and trains. All as intact as could be. But along with it they find random collections abstract sensory information, which is conceptualized by them as a common artifact tying all three places together. But this artifact never existed in our age and time! The abstract sensory information is conceptualized by their minds to accord to their means and methods of investigation. There is no telling what this artifact is from our perspective because the abstract sensory information is conceptualized by their minds! And yet they would prize this artifact as the most definitive representation of our time!" He laughed aloud. Can you imagine what it would be?

He peeked my curiosity and I stood at the edge of my seat.

"But I thought you said that abstract sensory information cannot be conceptualized."

"Yes and no. Abstract sensory information yields to any willful examination. Thus, under art historical scholarship or criticism abstract art yields to description and the powers of language. Any willful examination of abstract sensory information transforms a cognitive examination into imaginary sensory information. Abstract sensory data and imaginary sensory data are the exact same thing and yet the differences between the two are as wide as the Atlantic. The two are as different as night and day. It is only a willful interpretation that separates the two.

He paused for a moment searching my face for clues to rescue me from my confusion.

“You see abstract sensory information overpowers our ability to conceptualize because it delivers sensory information 'en masse' - in large quantities - rendering our ability to understand to a standstill forcing us, by default , to conclude the abstract art is meaningless elitist bullshit - of which it is- if all you understand is simple prosaic descriptions and high auction prices. Thus, it is vital to understand that abstract sensory information imposed upon with one's will transforms it into imaginary sensory information."

"Okay, think I get that. It reminds me of something I wrote down just recently." I dug through my backpack and took out my notebook. "Uh . . . here it is. Sally Everett, an associate professor of art at Metropolitan State College said that, "Art is incomprehensible until understood and understanding occurs as ordinary people fit art into meaningful personal contexts. Without context art is insignificant information" (Everett, 275).

"Aha! Fantastic!” Einstein announced intoning a french accent. “Now please tell me how in the world of all worlds can sensory information be insignificant? In evolutionary terms how can a creature simply designate incoming sensory information as insignificant? Any kind of creature that wants to survive, thrive and live to see another day does so by using all the sensory information presented to its senses. Otherwise its chances of survival are diminished considerably.

"In the 18th century Immanuel Kant said something along these lines - 'Since imagination is the forerunner of reason it contextualizes and conceptualizes or 'synthesizes' abstract sensory information in accord of our ability to reason.' Assuming that these future peoples cognitive processes are similar to ours I can assert that the artifact they find outweighs the importance of any possible existence of a concrete imprinted hand mark for even if they did find the hand mark they have not conceptualized hands. The very idea of hands is as foreign to them as they are to us. The artifact of hand imprint on wet cement would be unable presents itself to them as we see it. Therefore, the very existence of the imprinted hand is side-shuttled for more interesting artifacts that accord to their basic search premises, which according to them is that we are an intelligent species capable of producing technological machinery with our tentacles and under no circumstance do they actually recognize intelligence in anything that looks like an animal paw print!"

My sudden change of expression lit Einstein into fits and rolls of laughter. His eyes sparkled and he grasped his sides in exasperation. I couldn't help but to join him.

After a good fit of laughter I felt the weight of embarrassment lift and I found myself fearlessly expressing some of the ideas I had examined with my imagination.

"Earth and the Sunshine Kids!"

He looked at me quizzically.

I explained that I conceived that the future beings that had no idea what we looked like had evolved to become aware of themselves as planets. Thus, in some far off inconceivable future was a sexless teenager named Earth who was oblivious to our arrangement of a sun centered solar system. And yet, a sun or something similar still existed in the Earth's world and the orbiting planets of our solar system were still there but were conceived of and experienced by the Earth as neighbors, friends, schoolteachers and so on. Mars was the bully at school who picked on Earth. Venus was a warm bodied utterly friendly girl that had all the guys chased after. Jupiter perhaps was a teacher the Earth trusted and consulted in times of need or just out of curiosity and the desire to learn something. The Earth's parents, however, were from some far off solar system. The Earth's mother was a world made entirely of water. And Earth's father was made almost entirely of dirt but had underwater springs that would sometimes break the surface creating momentary oceans or fits of tearful emotion. All of these future beings existed on something they had yet to conceptualize or discover as a planet or whatnot. Maybe they knew they were in a land or perhaps they lived on some huge plain of ground wherein the horizon existed as something akin to the horizon of a black hole.

"What do their bodies look like?"

I admitted that I had a hard time conceiving or imagining a different kind of body for them. I told Einstein that I continued to experiment with the idea in spite of my inability to imagine what they looked like. I admitted that I couldn't conceive of them as having human like bodies but at the same time I couldn't imagine anything else.

"Very interesting. Fanciful and yet wrapped with a touch of sobriety and simplicity. I am dying to ask you what do you think these people believed about our senses?"

"What do you mean?"

"Telling from the objects of our world and how they operate they would conclude that we perceived the world in strict terms of sequence. Perhaps if they were to find a human body and our anthropological means of categorization the would call us Sequentia homosapien!"

"I am not following you."

"According to their view, which is flattered with their assumptions, the settlements they found don't shed any evidence as to what we look like. But they have tons of indirect evidence about how we perceived our world. The question is - What would they conclude about our senses?"

I was baffled that he was going that deep. I didn't make any sense to me.

"Without the evidence of a human body they would picture us with six to seven eyes or 50 ears; beings capable of devouring sequence! If you study the objects of our world and how our objects operate from cars, to VCRs to buses - all of it can be seen to operate by following a strict sequence of events."

"But if they've got a VCR then they have could find out what we looked like just by watching a tape!"

"Whose to say that they could even detect the same visual spectrum that we see? You're talking about living beings with the mass of planets! The evolution of a planet into a living thing fully aware of itself complete with a corresponding life sustaining perceptual environment is phenomenal! A race of such creatures, perhaps, would have synthesized time and space with ultra-slow moving x-rays or gamma rays; not in accordance with the visible spectrum."

"But if they couldn't see our visual spectrum then how did they find the remains of our civilization?"

"Ahah! Yes of course! Who knows?" He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Great question because it show you are headed in the direction of the inconceivable. I think such a question pushes the very limits of the imagination into the unimaginable. And to conceive of the unimaginable takes guts. By exercising the imagination with these thought experiments we are searching for a sense of awe as well as the feeling or the knowing or perhaps even the mood that allows us to acquiese to the idea that it is possible to achieve the impossible."

He looked at me specifically and squinted his eyes as if here were getting ready to tell me a secret. "And further, when things happen in a sequence there are only so many probable versions of events that can occur within a sequence. The plethora of sheer sequence that exists in our times would force them to conclude we were locked in our rationality and thus, artificially intelligent."

"Imagine that," he said and turned to his desk sharpening a pencil.

"But I mean eventually they WOULD find a skeleton of us or a picture or something."

"But what if they didn't? What if this project is shared only among a few high-minded professors who have only recently discovered these curious remnants? And they have only begun to discuss what to do with this discovery."

"Well then what about circumstantial evidence? Doorknobs, handles forks and knives could tell them we had hands."

"That's bullcrap!" He said pounding his desk and standing up. "Tentacles do the same job! Grasping and turning are not new evolutionary inventions! Why I believe that it was 2.3 billion years ago that the first jellyfish roamed the vast and ancient undersea world that the world was at the time.

"Erase sequence from your future Earth's world and what do you have?"I sat there in full concentration attempting to concieve of a conceptual arrangement that was impossible to concieve. "Now your turning to face the silence that comes with facing and pondering the inconceivable!”

"You see the task you've been assigned is more than a bit out of your reach. It will take more than your best to accomplish finding your hands in your dreams. Since you are dumb and your imagination rusty I had to be very patient with you and non-demanding even though you love the challange of meeting demands. Think and ponder of the light, sound, taste, touch and smell and tell me not that as a crow flies that light is your constant reminder!" Einstein announced. "And since you smoke cigarettes and drink beer and have the occasional coffee - taste, touch, smell and sound are also your constant reminders! Every single change in anyone of the five senses shall serve as a constant reminder for you to look at your hands. It is all too often that we ignore the world around us and operate on habit. The objects of the world rule our minds and force us to correspond with reality in artificially intelligent manner. Sounds are always interpreted as cars, buses trucks, trains or whatever may be. Light always lends the conviction of trains, planes or automobiles. Touch is always a desk, a toothbrush, or a carrot. Your task is to be alert to every single change in your perceptual environment and to be keen enough to use those changes to remind you that -this is a dream! And to look at your hands!

He paused for a moment allowing me to gather my things and he added, "You see, to be an imagination engineer, you have to be an inventor. You have to be able to improvise on a moments notice and use everything at your disposal. You have to be willing to entertain ideas beyond your wildest fantasies and then you have to have the audacity to attain those impossibilities. Make the decision to do this. Put your mind to it and you'll achieve something astounding."

Chapter Two: Logical Incongruencies

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."
– Albert Einstein

I walked in and found Einstein ruminating and slowly walking along the length of his laboratory. “Why doesn’t this moment feel impossible? Given all the random and chance events that went into creating this moment we should be experiencing the impossible!”

He saw me and announced with a finger pointing skyward, “It is only by the slimmest possible chances that life arose on this Earth. Do you know how slim a cord we dangle on? The universe exploded into a flurry of matter and anti-matter. Thus, matter and anti-matter should have canceled each other out leaving nothing. Among scientists it is unanimous; matter and anti-matter were created in equal amounts and should have annihilated each other. By all accounts matter should not exist! But by some inexplicable reason it is believed that an unexplained random chance event occurred allowing enough matter to escape annihilation and create all the matter we see in the universe today.

"But this random chance event - Why did it occur? No one really knows. The latest debates say that an unknown process called baryogenesis created the asymmetry between matter and antimatter.” He looked at me poignantly waiting to see if I knew what asymmetry meant. I nodded and he continued. “By unknown scientists mean hypothetical. Baryogenesis is still a hypothesis and yet somehow somewhere this incongruency is not the be all end all of their conclusions or theories - they still continue to believe a linear sequence of events gave rise to all we see.”

He sat down, weathered but sharply focused. “In spite of this incongruency scientists’ logic prevails and the timeline or sequence of events that led up to the creation of earth are still accepted as truth bearing. He looked at me and blinked repeatedly as if seeing something astounding.

“And yet another logical incongruency exists,” he said springing from his chair and quickly perusing his shelves of books. He found one and plucked it from its encasement. He leafed through and found a page with a turned down corner. Then he read aloud. “If it were not for a slight fluctuation in the density distribution of matter, theorists contend, galaxies would have been unable to form and life would have been unable to evolve (Parker).

“And still another logical incongruency exists! If the Earth were a million miles closer to the sun the Earth would be to hot for
life to evolve. Another million miles away and the Earth would be too cold for life to begin. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. In spite of all these incongruencies in our logic life is here. And still this moment does not feel impossible. How did your logical incongruency go?”

I looked at him surprised by the sudden recognition and a bit shocked because I didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about. Einstein nearly rolled his eyes at me. Instantly I felt insignificant, embarrassed and uncomfortable the same way I did whenever my father rolled his eyes at me. I felt like I let Einstein down and yet at the same time I faintly knew what he wanted of me.

“Let’s go into the future for a moment and examine some logical incongruencies there. Let us imagine that in some far off distant future Earth there is a civilization of intelligent beings that have found scattered, rare remnants of our civilization. They have found our writing but are unable to translate. They have found our manner of living in terms of the layout of our homes, its fixtures and amenities. They have found our planes, trains and automobiles but they have yet to find a skeleton, or any remnant of what we look like neither in books nor pictures.”

“How could they not know how we look Einstein?”

“This is only their first archaeological dig and it is occurring in various parts of their world and their findings are the first acknowledgement of a race of intelligent beings that came before them. And also these beings look entirely different from us. They are so different as to be nearly inconceivable. They are impossible beings whose very nature is similar and yet utterly different from anything we can know or speak of. And for some odd unknown reason they have come to the conclusion that the intelligent beings that existed thousand of millennia before their time had tentacles - not hands. As of yet there is no shred of evidence to refute this conclusion but lots of evidence to support it.

"Now, your task is to stretch your imagination and conceive of the impossible. Next week you must come back with a definitive yet still highly unimaginable idea of what these future beings that are digging up the remains of our civilization looked like. To do this you must go and gather every bit of knowledge you have, then look at the full length of your knowledge and compare and contrast all the weird and crazy ways this future intelligent life form may look like. Then you must go one step further and create the impossible! You must come back with a very definitive yet still highly unimaginable idea of what these future beings look like. Give your imagination all the awe in the world, in the universe and let the imagination dream a current of awe that will pull you into allowing yourself to conceive of and achieve the impossible.”
He looked at me quizzically as if waiting for me to complete the assignment immediately.

“I can’t do this on the spot!”

“Of course you can’t.” He said frowning mischievously. “How was your assignment from last week?”

Finally, a chance at redemption. I was thrilled. I told him that the most absurd conclusion I could come up with was that the perceptual environment was infinite.

“Yes,” he said unimpressed. “Given that we are always moving in space and time, there are always two things that change with specific measurable consistency, an objects location in space and time. Right now, as we sit still, we are moving in six different directions at once. We move at 1038 miles per hour with the rotation of the Earth. The Earth itself moves at 67,00 miles per hour along its orbit around the sun; the solar system in which the Sun and Earth reside in glide along at 135 miles per second; the region of the galaxy that we exist in moves along at 155 miles a second; and the galaxy itself is trucking along at 185 miles per second. Thus, we are moving in six different directions at once. And if we were to locomote ourselves either by walking or driving or taking an elevator we would be moving in seven directions. Therefore, even if there are no detectable perceptual changes in the object, the fact that the objects we are looking at and we ourselves are moving in six different directions should give us the impetus to search for the smallest, slightest perceptual changes because the objects position in space and time has changed.”

He turned and placed a wide eye on me – “Every single debate in academia surrounds or rather covers up or attempts to expound upon logical incongruencies! Logical Incongruencies!” He said pointing his finger skyward. “What we have here is the phenomena of logical incongruencies! These exist everywhere. In all of academia. In every subject, topic and discussion.”

“What are logical incongruencies?”

“Logical incongruencies are gaps in linear way of thinking. It is as if our reasoning goes in a straight line and then suddenly it inexplicably jumps to the left and starts a new line of reasoning. For example, in spite of the fact that the beginning of the universe, this explosion from a singularity of nearly infinite mass, defies everything we know, we still pick up our yardstick of reasoning and continue to measure things as if we actually believe that we have an accurate idea of the world, of the universe, and our humanity.”

“And this sucks because we are wrong we don’t have access to our imagination! Is that what you are saying?”

“No, what started all of physicists and cosmologists know is impossible! Beyond comprehension. Beyond our current understanding of physics. This gives us plenty of room to posit that the universe is the most intelligent thing there is.”

My jaw just about flung open. Here was a research level one university professor actually asserting the existence of God. I was stunned and shocked.

He smiled knowing the effect his words had on me.

“Just for the sake of entertaining your imagination, lets say that the universe could have been intelligent from the very beginning! We can hypothesize that what came out of that initial explosion was a highly intelligent awareness. From there we can posit that perhaps the movement of this intelligence affected the ratio of matter to antimatter in order to ensure its survival and propagation. This huge, vast and inconceivable awareness then trickled down into intelligent galaxies and then was downgraded a bit to form the first generation of Suns that scientists say must have existed out there billions of years ago! And this generation of suns held the universe in its grips for eons! Perhaps these Suns were aware of themselves as some inconceivable aspect of the universe. Then after eons these Suns crumbled and gave birth to yet more intelligent galaxies and within those galaxies another round of Suns.” He smiled and his eyes meandered to the window watching the light stream through for a few moments.

“The supreme awareness of the universe continued to trickle down from Suns to the planets like the Earth. The Earth in turn re-birthed this universal awareness into plankton and such on and so forth. This of course means that the dinosaurs had much more intelligence that we do. We are nothing compared to their intensely searching intelligence.”

“But Einstein, they were huge REPTILES! The lowest form of consciousness we know to exist is driven primarily by the instinct of fear!

“What do you know? You act as if you know everything! Perhaps it is true that our reptilian minds are a mere shadow of the dinosaur fear and anger instinct but what was encased inside their tiny minds?”

“Brain matter!” I said aloud. “Small brains and big bodies produce dumb animals! The ratio of meat to matter, brain matter, has to be like ours. There is a word for it . . . ”

“Otherwise there is no intelligence?!” He said smiling like a Cheshire cat.

“Yes!”

“That is absurd! Who has filled you with so much crap?! How do you account for the coordination of growth, healing, and hormonal secretion within all that mass? And more importantly where is consciousness located in all that dinosaur mass? Let’s throw out the hypothesis that the brain is the center of consciousness. How do you know that the dinosaurs weren’t aware of eternity and thus from their perspective their own perception and conception of time, space and movement seemed to take place on a galactic scale thereby forcing their consciousness to exist during the same era as the first generation of suns?”

Before I got a chance to repel his ridiculous statements he went on. “Further, why does the ‘amount’ of brain matter indicate intelligence? Perhaps WE are intelligent because our anus exists between 3 1/2 feet to 5 1/2 feet above the ground! It is easy to demonstrate that the closer the anus is to the ground the less intelligence an animal demonstrates. And opposingly, it is easy to demonstrate that the higher the anus is from the ground the less intelligence the animal demonstrates. Thus, the median range for producing intelligence is right here!” He sprung out of his chair and nonchalantly presented himself stood as part of the demonstration.

I was incensed. “Yeah right! But brain size correlates with brain matter. Intelligence and brain size may go together or they may not but at least there is brain matter there as a possible source of intelligence. The anus is not a source of intelligence."

“My boy, my boy. Are you saying that the height of the anus has nothing to do with intelligence because the anus is not directly connected to brain matter?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

“Bipedalism! Bipedalism rose the animal from the ground and managed to get the anus at the height needed for intellectual banter!”

“But if you are using the height of the anus and comparing that with other species to determine intelligence you need a third thing, a third point.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know . . . like . . . Like some kind of energy line or frequency that governs over the 3/12 to 5/12 feet area."

“Why is that?”

“Because the height of an anus cannot be a measure for intelligence.”

“But the anus is connected to the brain right?”

“Well yeah but . . . “

“ - then perhaps that ultra fine intelligence that burst forth from the universe’s humble beginnings made it so that animals whose anus' can get in that range and have bipedalism would be intelligent!”

“I guess this explains why cats always sit on the backs of couches, huh?”

“Further, lets hypothesize that on a galactic level there is a resonance, much like the gravitational pull of the black hole at the center of the galaxy, between all the plankton in our galaxy. Since their collective mass outweighs any other creature on the planet they are the most intelligent species not only on our planted but throughout the galaxy.”

“There is no given reason on this Earth that you are right because your argument is arranged solely from an idea that has no observable merit!” I felt just like my father. He was always on my ass to be a scientist when I grew up and constantly threw my own ideas back in my face with nearly that exact same line.

Einstein burst into laughter and laughed so hard tears welled up in his eyes. When he finally caught his breath he said, “My little tour of the imagination is merely a demonstration to show you something. Without setting things up in polar opposites you will be trapped in a single view. I am sure you’ve heard the scientific story of the creation of the universe and some people whole-heartedly believe this is the case but that is bad thinking. Who was it that said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function?”

I shrugged my shoulders attempting to hide the fact that I had never heard that such an idea.

“What if this obsession with the linear evolutionary view of the universe is the result of the structure of the left brain? And the right brain, the more imaginative non-linear side is the source of the biblical version. This means the conviction that is held onto so dearly by evolutionists and to an equal measure by creationists could be the sole result of how information is predominately processed by either half of the brain.”

I laughed aloud. “But that would mean that there is rampant dogmatism on both sides. That would mean that countless years could go by without knowing that one’s beliefs were merely the result of the brain structure. It means that years upon years of a peoples lives are spent in meaningless toil debating over the way the brain processes information without ever knowing it!”

“How do we know it is not this way? Born and raised in an environment one would have been taught, versed and coached to embrace being a republican or a democrat – creationist or scientist. The body would grow to uphold these views and tie them to emotions creating a nearly unmovable being. But why do that? Why not see and explore both views without investment by having the audacity to go into the imagination on a journey of awareness.”

“Hmmm?”

"In order to think accurately about anything one has to take what one knows to opposite extremes thereby stretching the imagination and reason in tandem. Reason and imagination do not work in tandem when one side of the brain dominates the other. By stretching the imagination and reason in tandem one slowly becomes capable of achieving and learning extraordinary things. The thought experiment was meant to give you an example of stretching your imagination and reason together thereby touching upon awe and laughter two important ingredients in having no investment in the outcome of the impossible events that surround us. With awe there is clarity of thought and sobriety – no obsession. Without that stretch between imagination and reason we are nothing. I can guarantee you that. But with it we have everything and everthing is within our reach. Everything!" He smiled and turned on the radio dialing it to the classical music station. Vivaldi's Four Seasons played in the laboratory.

"Your time with me will be well spent. You are going to learn an exquisite art form - the art of engineering a conscious experience. So far your imagination is not trained to do this and it is your God given inborn right. Right now you are as rigid as a two-ton barracuda! You're an unmovable being! You’ve never stretched the imagination and felt born on the wings of angels!”

He danced a two-step and snapped his fingers.

"Your imagination is passive to reason when indeed it should triumph. Now you must do everything in your power to find your hands in your dreams. Repeat to yourself, 'I intend to find my hands in my dreams.' Not blindly, as if this were an affirmation of something that already exists, but in tandem with the highly reasonable and demonstrable idea that almost nothing in this world holds the imprint of the human hand. Diligently search for and compare almost all objects you encounter with your hands. Perhaps even write a list of present day objects that may lend a clue to that future civilization that the beings who existed in our times ruled their world with their hands.”