Читать книгу Tufti the Priestess. Live Stroll Through a Movie - Вадим Зеланд - Страница 10

Again and again, over and over, my sweeties. Repetition – your pain, my gain! Let’s recap what you need to do.

• Wake up, activate the plait, hold the feeling, compose reality.

• Whether it works or not depends on whether you accept or negate what is happening.

• It is only possible if it fits into the mould of your world-view.

You are relatively primitive beings. Nothing can happen to you that does not fit with how you perceive the world and yourself within it. All sorts of incredible things happen in your dreams, but simply because you reduce your standards of critical assessment. In waking, it’s the opposite. Everything has to be rigorously reconciled with the mould. So your ability to move the frame depends on whether you can concede the possibility with certainty, or whether you remain in doubt of its viability.

Performing simple ‘miracles’ will be easy for you. You will be able to create anything that corresponds with your everyday, routine experience. Your experience is what consolidates the mould. More complex movements of the frame require new content to be spliced in. I will repeat the same thing many times, over and over, again and again until you understand. And if you don’t understand, I will order you all to chop off your head. I can do without idiots!

Alright, don’t cry, my feeble ones, listen on. Once, previously, I said, the script carries you along a film roll that you did not choose. Broadly speaking, the film roll is your lifeline, and the script is your fate. You don’t choose your fate and not only that, you don’t even try and change it, although you could.

You are foolish to console yourselves with the hope that fate, although preordained, is still in your hands. In fact, it’s a lot worse than that. You are being led by a harsh script. It only appears to you that you take action as you see fit. It sounds plausible, but it’s still an illusion. Not only what you see, but the things you do can be illusory. You won’t be able to see through this kind of illusion though because you are constantly in it.

Do you remember we talked about the dream mannequins? Mannequins inhabit the pictures of your dreams, like the heroes of a motion picture, once shot onto a roll of film. You watch a dream and the mannequins move. You watch a film and the heroes come to life. As soon as the film or dream is over, all the characters freeze until the next viewing or, otherwise, forever.

Do you think that the characters in a motion picture or a computer game are aware that they are in a film, and that you are watching them? No. Are the dream mannequins aware that you are seeing them in a dream? Again, no. And now I am asking you: do you know who you are?

You can’t ask the characters in the film. You could ask the mannequins, but there is not much point. You are different from the former and the latter in that you can at least dimly grasp the meaning of the question. And also, in that you are able to be self-aware. But when are you self-aware? Only in the moment that you ask yourself this question. The rest of the time, where are you? Who are you?

You are the characters in a film roll, in the life that is happening to you. You don’t live your life – your life happens to you. Neither the dream mannequin, nor the hero of the motion picture are capable of distinguishing the illusion of their actions or, more precisely, the illusion of action occurring. So why would you think that you would be capable of doing so?

No, you are, of course, capable, my clever ones, and yet you don’t. All the time that you aren’t asking yourself the question, where are you and who are you, you are just exactly as lacking in rational understanding as the characters of a film or dream. Your attention is constantly immersed in one of the screens, and your intention, in the current frame. So your motives and actions are not in fact yours, do you see?

What happens, literally, is the following. At a certain point in time, you start to want something, and you struggle to do whatever it is. You think that these are your own motives and actions, whereas, in fact, they are spelled out in the script. You might think that you had the idea for something, but in actual fact, this is just the story twist for your role. You are consumed by current reality to such an extent that you stop being aware of what you are doing and fail to see through the illusion.

You have your own mannequins in the films stored in the Eternity archive. When you watch one of these films in a dream, your consciousness finds a mannequin, which comes to life and starts moving. As long as you are having the dream, you are living in the body of a dream mannequin as one of multiple different variants. Take a look in a mirror some time in a dream. You won’t recognise yourself.

In the film roll, along which your life is running, it is exactly the same. Your consciousness enters the next version of the dummy, which comes to life and becomes you in the current frame. But here’s the question: how are you different to the dream mannequins if in waking life, you live as if you were in a dream?

And generally speaking, what makes you any better than a snail? Repulsive, slimy snails, which respond equally as primitively to all external stimuli. They tuck away their horns and hide in a little house… Your fate is as predetermined as you are predictable.

Even the little that you have learned so far, my dears, is incomprehensible to you because it does not fit the mould of your worldview. And as long as it remains inaccessible to you, you will be free in dreams and bound in your fate. But when, finally, you see the light and ditch the illusion, you will be able to stroll through reality, like a living being inside a film. And you will be able to pick a new reality, like choosing a reel from the archive.

And now an interlude! I am exiting my film and setting off for a book. I’ll see you there. Bye for now, snails![1]