Monday, November 6, 2023

The threads of reality

Transcribed from a conversation between Angelo Dilullo and Josh Putnam (favorite parts bolded):

Josh: This was something entirely different. It was almost like a spontaneous destruction and creation of all possibilities that, I guess, could be time. So, it definitely spills over into, just, all forms of reality, too, I suppose. Yeah, like, it kind of felt like a—I'll just describe it—this is always going to be conceptualized, of course, and it even came with some imagery in memory, but it was almost like these trillions of teal strings, like threads, kind of swirling in something like a sphere and pouring into an infinitely tiny singularity and vanishing. And also simultaneously, it's spewing something out, and it was just like a repeating cycle. And yeah, out here, in this distance, it was twisting and doing all sorts of chopping. It's really difficult to put into words, but it gave a very distinct sense that anything that could be, has already happened, almost—but not even like in a sense of a past.

Angelo: [...] There's something about it, like you said—it collapses into a singularity and then becomes infinite again, and again, and again. It has this essence of infinite penetration into itself. And also, it's fractal-like. It's as if no matter how far you zoom in, it just becomes more of itself, with more possibilities and iterations. And, at the very same time, nothing is moving at all. It's so paradoxical.

Josh: It's like the essence of paradox—that's what it felt like. There was this sense of being at the singularity, almost like the eye of a hurricane, and it was that nothingness. And you can't even describe it; even the idea of "nothing" is something. It was just... yeah, nothing—not even like it was a black space. There was nothingness; it was just frozen nothing. And then there was this turbulent outer, almost disk, and that just seemed like potentiality. It almost seemed like the stuff that dreams are made of, or the stuff that imagination is made of.

Angelo: It's very fundamental to the most fundamental way of experiencing anything at all. It just feels like this giddiness, like being able to experience anything at all is just a miracle, miraculous sort of ...

Josh: It felt as if there might have been a substance that was being simultaneously pulled apart—that was the substance, and I was the substance—and then put back and jammed so tightly into a tight singularity that there was nothing there. So, it wasn't like watching, or even necessarily feeling, but it felt so fundamental, like the threads of reality.

Angelo: I actually sort of avoid talking about it in videos and like, publicly, because it sounds so enticing, and there's nothing your mind can do with this. Like, you can seek it, but that's not it. But it's quite real, and I've called it "the fabric of reality"—that's the best terminology I've come up with for it. It's like a fabric of reality, sort of. Yeah, but it's even before overt reality. It's fundamental even to reality coming into being. It's neither something nor nothing; it's neither real nor unreal. It has way too much— I can say potentiality, or flexibility, or unhindered essence—to be encompassed by any of those terminologies, mind frames, or even physical confirmations, you know.