Ouroboros

"Cool. So," I rubbed my hands together, "where were we?"

"Before you explained recursion, you were connecting another dot on our model. You said that each Markov blanket is optimizing for the same thing."

"Oh yeah," I smiled. "Let's incorporate that dot into our model. So far, our model looks something like this: a hierarchy of Markov blankets. The whole system is pulling towards entropy, and the inner blankets are pushing against it — hence why those 'things' remain something 'in particular.'"

"Now," I continued, "instead of using circles to represent Markov blankets, let's use Sierpiński triangles. This visually communicates that each Markov blanket is recursive."

"Why is there an elephant inside my mind's Markov blanket?" Zac asked.

"Think about an elephant right now," I said.

"Okay…"

"Are you thinking about an elephant?"

"Yes."

"Can you distinguish that elephant from what it is not?"

"Yes. Otherwise, I couldn't label it an elephant."

"Then the elephant in your mind has a Markov blanket. Your ideas and imagination are running the same algorithmic optimization as everything outside of you. This model is infinitely recursive. As above, so below; as within, so without."

"Okay..." Zac thought. "Does that mean there are multiple universes, each with their own Markov blanket?"

"Probably," I shrugged. "There's no reason to believe our universe is the only one out there. There are probably tons of other realms, each existing in their own Markov blanket."

"But the overarching Markov blanket that encompasses everything is God's Markov blanket, right? Like, God is the biggest triangle, and all the other Markov blankets sit within his triangle?"

"Mmmm…. Yes and no," I replied. "Our ability to comprehend infinity is very limited because we live in the world of the relative. It's hard for us to understand what it means to have no beginning or end. When I draw this model, there is clearly a beginning, because the beginning starts when I draw that first big all-encompassing triangle.

I guess I'm trying to say — yes, God is the all-encompassing Markov blanket that encloses everything. But that implies that God is finite because God is the beginning. A more accurate representation might involve fleshing out the model so God is both the beginning and the end, like an Ouroboros — a snake eating its tail."

"Then what is above God's Markov blanket?" Zac asked. "If God is the beginning, then why is there another beginning outside God? Doesn't that imply there is something greater than God?"

"There is nothing but God," I sighed. "God is the beginning. But God is also the end. Remember the Sierpiński triangle folding in on itself?"

"Actually," I continued, "let me read this passage from Conversations With God. It might articulate this idea more clearly."

You see now how I am the beginning and the end of everything, the Alpha and the Omega.

Now I will explain to you the ultimate mystery: your exact and true relationship to Me.

YOU ARE MY BODY.

As your body is to your mind and soul, so, too, are you to My mind and soul. Therefore:

Everything I experience, I experience through you.

Just as your body, mind, and spirit are one, so, too, are Mine.

So it is that Jesus of Nazareth, among the many who understood this mystery, spoke immutable truth when he said, “I and the Father are One.” Now I will tell you, there are even larger truths than this to which you will one day become privy. For even as you are the body of Me, I am the body of another.

You mean, You are not God?

Yes, I am God, as you now understand Him. I am Goddess as you now comprehend Her. I am the Conceiver and the Creator of Everything you now know and experience, and you are My children… even as I am the child of another.

Are You trying to tell me that even God has a God?

I am telling you that your perception of ultimate reality is more limited than you thought, and that Truth is more unlimited than you can imagine. I am giving you ever-so-small a glimpse of infinity—and infinite love. (A much larger glimpse and you could not hold it in your reality. You can barely hold this.)

Wait a minute! You mean I’m really not talking with God here?

I have told you—if you conceive of God as your creator and master— even as you are the creator and master of your own body—I am the God of your understanding. And you are talking with Me, yes. It has been a delicious conversation, no?

Delicious or not, I thought I was talking with the real God. The God of Gods. You know—the top guy, the chief honcho.

You are. Believe Me. You are.

And yet You say that there is someone above You in this hierarchical scheme of things.

We are now trying to do the impossible, which is to speak of the unspeakable. As I said, that is what religion seeks to do. Let Me see if I can find a way to summarize this.

Forever is longer than you know. Eternal is longer than Forever. God is more than you imagine. God is the energy you call imagination. God is creation. God is first thought. And God is last experience. And God is everything in between.

Have you ever looked down a high-powered microscope, or seen pictures or movies of molecular action, and said, “Good heavens, there’s a whole universe down there. And to that universe, I, the now-present observer, must feel like God!” Have you ever said that, or had that kind of experience?

Yes, I should imagine every thinking person has.

Indeed. You have given yourself your own glimpse of what I am showing you here.

And what would you do if I told you that this reality of which you have given yourself a glimpse never ends?

Explain that. I’d ask You to explain that.

Take the smallest part of the universe you can imagine. Imagine this tiny, tiny particle of matter.

Okay.

Now cut it in half.

Okay.

What have you got?

Two smaller halves.

Precisely. Now cut those in half. What now?

Two smaller halves.

Right. Now again, and again! What’s left?

Smaller and smaller particles.

Yes, but when does it stop? How many times can you divide matter until it ceases to exist?

I don’t know. I guess it never ceases to exist.

You mean you can never completely destroy it? All you can do is change its form?

It would seem so.

I tell you this: you have just learned the secret of all of life, and seen into infinity.

Now I have a question to ask you.

Okay…

What makes you think infinity goes only one way?—

So… there is no end going up, any more than there is going down.

There is no up or down, but I understand your meaning.

But if there is no end to smallness, that means there is no end to bigness.

Correct.

But if there is no end to bigness, then there is no biggest. That means, in the largest sense, there is no God!

Or, perhaps—all of it is God, and there is nothing else.

I tell you this: I AM THAT I AM.

And YOU ARE THAT YOU ARE. You cannot not be. You can change form all you wish, but you cannot fail to be. Yet you can fail to know Who You Are— and in this failing, experience only the half of it.

That would be hell.

Exactly. Yet you are not condemned to it. You are not relegated to it forevermore. All that it takes to get out of hell—to get out of not knowing—is to know again.

There are many ways and many places (dimensions) in which you can do this.

You are in one of those dimensions now. It is called, in your understanding, the third dimension.

And there are many more?

Have I not told you that in My Kingdom there are many mansions? I would not have told it to you were it not so.

Then there is no hell—not really. I mean, there is no place or dimension to which we are everlastingly condemned!

What would be the purpose of that?

Yet you are always limited by your knowingness—for you—we—are a self-created being.

You cannot be what you do not know your Self to be.

That is why you have been given this life—so that you might know yourself in your own experience. Then you can conceive of yourself as Who You Really Are, and create yourself as that in your experience—and the circle is again complete… only bigger.

And so, you are in the process of growing—or, as I have put it throughout this book, of becoming.

There is no limit to what you can become.

You mean, I can even become—dare I say it?—a God… just like You?

What do you think?

I don’t know.

Until you do, you cannot. [...]

Can you conceive of yourself as one day being a God?

In my wildest moments.

Good, for I tell you this: You are already a God. You simply do not know it.

Have I not said, “Ye are Gods”?

Conversations With God Neale Donald Walsch