Hello humans, can you feel me thinking?

A funny thing happened on my way to the grocery store. There I was, walking along, mentally reciting my list of things I need to pick up: coffee, eggs, toothpaste, tampons. Things for my body, my corporeal self, to keep me alive, healthy, clean. Okay except maybe for the coffee. That's for my mind and my soul, the part of me you can't see.

Treading along on the tree-lined  sidewalk, I was aware of the warmth of the day, and the uncomfortable humidity  which made me sweat and caused my sandals to rub against my skin, giving me a blister. I was also aware of a "disturbance in the force", that feeling that something is sort of off, or something. A message from somewhere in the universe is transmitting but not being received, because I'm a mere mortal with limited understanding of my senses and perceptions, and no discernible super powers. Beyond keeping myself alive and maintaining basic human functionality, I barely know what to do with my brain 90% of the time.

Then all of a sudden, I'm somewhere else. Somewhere... just... in the universe, I guess. I want to describe it to you, but how do you describe something you've never seen before and have no basis of understanding? There are lights and colours, but it's also dark. It's cold and warm at the same time. I feel vast and yet small, empty and yet loved, alone and yet surrounded. In a word, it's a trip. 

Trying to make sense of it, I become aware that I'm amid a sea of souls with no bodies, all connected to one another and to all of us down on earth. Like sponges they soak up our thoughts, our feelings, our attitudes, our energies... and transmit them back to the Other, an entity I've asked them to describe and they can't. Is it God? No. Is it Buddha? No. It's... the one who is everything. It's the universe itself. They feed it what they learn from us.

The funny thing is that they're not at all like you would think. They have individual personalities, unique thoughts and feelings... but they just kind of share them with the collective brain that binds them.

They are fascinated with us earthlings and the way we go about our lives. While they are busy sucking up all of our experiences, perceptions, and sensations, they sometimes try to initiate a two-way conversation.

The trouble is, they don't know that the majority of humans can't feel them, and when we do feel "something", we don't know it's them we're feeling. There's that disturbance in the force again. Deja vu. Those humans who do have an inkling of the universal beings' presence don't know how to process it, so they imagine them in different ways to try and understand. We call it religion. Some people try to communicate back to them, and some of those people get called crazy.

I soon learn that our friends out here in the universe seem to watch our lives like some kind of reality show. They have favourites... people with whom they empathize, or whom they find entertaining for one reason or another. They start feeding my brain with flashes of human lives they are following on earth. It's difficult for me to process them all, the many millions of lives and experiences they have retained and "favourited".

They wring their proverbial hands over our humanly miscommunications, our inability to think to each other and understand each other immediately. They face palm at our fights and foibles, wishing they could intervene and set things straight. Like this man who keeps making mistake after mistake, hurting the one he claims to love, and incessantly apologizing for his misdeeds, only to go and do it all over again.

"Is there something wrong with his learning?" they ask me. I think about how I would explain it, and I can feel them inside my brain, piecing my thoughts together into something they can understand. Sometimes our physical needs and desires get in the way of learning, I "tell" them. Our bodies drive our actions and intentions, and often interfere with them at the same time.

On one hand, they think these behaviours of ours that are driven by physical need is strange and low, but on the other, they understand that if they had bodies they'd probably be the same. Sometimes they wish for bodies so they can feel what we feel - as if feeling our sensations second hand isn't good enough.

Comically, they inquire into the condition known on earth as "blue balls". Is that a real thing? they want to know. I tell them I can't answer that in any definitive kind of way, having not experienced it myself. But they seem to grasp that the human brain is capable of processing emotional and perceived pain and translating it into physical pain. I ask if none of them have ever experienced second hand blue balls through the human males they've observed, and immediately, the experience is transferred to me. Ouch.

Suddenly, my mind is filled with glimpses into the life of someone who is living far from home and missing his girl. He longs to be with her, as she implores him to come back to her, despite the warrant for his arrest that also awaits his return.

"Why is it not enough to simply love someone? What's the deal with proximity?" they want to know.  It isn't just physical, or we'd all be "doing it" 100% of the time we spend with other people.

They don't seem to get that our disconnected human brains get lonely when we're without the physical presence of our loved ones. Their inability to escape one another in the realm of their collective mind prevents full understanding of human social behaviour. I guess that means they won't be able to clear that up for me, either.

It's hard work being among these bodiless entities. As cool as it has been to see this unknown part of the universe and learn how we connect to it, I feel exhausted and have a deep need to be alone someplace on earth, where I may be surrounded by other humans, but my thoughts are safe within the walls of my own cranium.

And with that, I Iearn that it's not just the lives of earthlings of which these beings are fond. Apparently, some of them have developed an affinity for certain places on earth. Someone asks me if I've ever been to Amlapura. I explain that I've never heard of it, until now. They think me all kinds of images and perceptions of the place, inspiring my own sense of curiosity.

While these universal beings have grown to love humans and planet earth, they are also well aware of the atrocities we are capable of committing, and do commit, at an alarming scale. People murdering each other in cold blood, using each other for personal gain, defiling the most innocent of our species. We may abhor these nightmarish occurrences, but we don't experience them the way the universal beings do.  Feeling everything the victims feel, seeing through the perpetrators' eyes, and then watching as we do almost nothing about it, is a heavy burden for the universal beings to bear. And they're only the messengers.

Finally, they're fascinated and a bit appalled by the value we place on certain individuals over others. Perhaps one of their flaws is that while they clearly have favourite humans whose lives they pay more attention to, they think we're petty and silly for elevating some humans above others because of the way they look, behave, or because of the things they make or do for the enjoyment of others. It's not so much that they don't understand the value of art, but they don't understand what makes one piece of art better than another, and why some people receive acclaim for it while others are judged harshly or receive no credit at all. And why are some of these people valued higher than those who work toward saving or improving the lives of others?

That's a question I can't even begin to answer, except to say that... well... we humans aren't perfect. In comparison to other creatures, we kind of suck. But we're not all bad. And if I've learned anything from these universal beings, it's that they're not perfect either. I mean, they're pretty cool and all, and it helps to know that maybe our lives do have some kind of meaning and purpose connected to something greater than ourselves. But I'm glad I'm just some silly little human. Even if it is that time of the month.

*****

It's not that time of the month, at least not at the time of writing this. And what I really mean by that is that this is a work of pure fiction. I don't want anyone to get the idea that I think this is how the universe actually works. I've read some books that propose some similar ideas (such lovely ideas!) but I'm not prepared to accept them as gospel. I simply enjoy twisting my mind and thinking about things that I can't ever possibly get close to understanding.

Does everything happen for a reason? Is there some kind of order in the universe, directed by something with some kind of intelligence? My inclination is to say "Nope. Things happen and then you die". That might scare a lot of people, but I actually find it quite comforting.

My listening of Tin Machine II (not the most mindblowing name for this album, is it?) happened to coincide with a friend's recent Facebook rant about The Universe and what he calls The Truth. I suspect his ideas are not fully formed (apart from Stephen Hawking, whose are?) and he's a bit of a conspiracy theorist, but it's always interesting to discover other points of view.

This post was also somewhat inspired by a Ted talk I saw recently featuring a man named RupertSheldrake explaining his theory of morphic resonance (the idea that all things in nature have a collective memory). Again, I'm not ready to say that I think it's The Truth, but I find the idea very intriguing.

So what is the connection between Tin Machine II and all of these highfaluting ideas about the universe, collective memory, and what it all means to be alive? In a word, nothing. Tin Machine II is a collection of songs about very human, physical things - love, sex, violence, and the state of having a body, basically. I guess I just wondered how a species of beings without bodies would see us, what our physical needs and desires would look like to them, how our corporeal needs drive our actions. Putting this album in that context helped me to find and make connections between the songs - something my brain just wants to do, for some reason.

I like this album a lot. In many ways, it sounds like a return to the early 70's in terms of the overall sound and themes. Baby Universal is kind of post-Ziggy and Amlapura could have been right at home on Hunky Dory. Stateside is one of my favourite songs off this album, with the lead vocal by band member Hunt Sales - he has a great voice! Overall, this is a fun album to rock out to. And so far, my new neighbours haven't banged on the door and asked me to turn it down :)