The Tenth Mystery

All times exists at once. Past, present, future and all probabilities are here at once. However, each moment is a different set of circumstances and conditions. Some may only be a little different, and some may be very different from one another.

When you enter into the slipstream of a physical life, you are choosing to participate in the circumstances and conditions (for the most part) that the other participants in that life stream are experiencing. Each moment of that life stream is an agreement amongst the group as a whole and each of the individual participants, in regards to their immediate conditions and circumstances.

In other words all of the participants agree in general to the mass set of circumstances that we are experiencing (the planets, suns and gravity and the like). And, these agreements go right down to the immediate level when I “agree” to have this immediate experience with the atoms and molecules of this keyboard and the light flowing in through the kitchen window.

The participants in our life stream are agreeing that these sets of circumstances and conditions are going to recognize as the facts of our world. And conversely, we are agreeing to not recognize the circumstances and conditions of the moments of 2102 as the facts that make up our current reality.

When you enter into the life stream, you join in agreeing with the others in that life stream that their particular sets of conditions and circumstances are going to be the agreed upon constituents of your shared reality. Thus we all have the same sunrise, (though we will all experience it differently). In effect each moment is a group of agreements, a group of these agreed upon circumstances and conditions.

The experience of time is really just the effect of the experience of shifting our attention from one set of agreements to the next set off mass agreements, which all the participants of the life stream are accepting as reality. As you shift your attention from one set of agreements to the next set, you experience the change that seems to be movement and time.

When a person is born into a life stream that is a complex organism, such as a human, the first months and years are spent in learning to orient your awareness and attention onto the same set of circumstances and conditions that the other human beings are having.

The human organism of the baby is predisposed to receive and process physical sensations due to its experience of growth within the womb. The personality learns to mold these sensations into a whole experience through repeated practice while a baby and young child.

After enough practice, the whole process becomes so effortless that we even forget that we are doing it. But, this also explains why children are able to see the things that adults cannot see. For example, the unofficial reality that is not a part of our mass-shared agreements, such as angels and fairies. This is because they have not yet locked as fully as the adults have with their attention upon only the “official” reality.

On occasion adults can step out of the habitual mind processes briefly and begin to see other unofficial realities such as other moments in time not yet happened, or that have past. However, other than the somewhat positive benefit of opening up the consciousness to new experiences and stretching the mind to new dimensions of possibility, these practices are generally, like other psychic powers, of limited interest to Buddhists.