Imagine an Apple

A Dialogue, Contained Inside a Mind, During an Excursion into Hyperspace

Close your eyes, and think of an apple. What do you see?

Well, I don’t ‘see’ anything.

Of course. But in your mind’s eye.

I see an apple.

An apple?

An apple. It’s red. Glossy. There’s a stubby little stem sticking out the top, and two tiny little leaves coming off the stem.

If you were to take a bite out of this imaginary apple, what then?

Then the apple has a bite taken out of it, of course. A perfectly crisp circular chunk removed. And somehow it’s even more apple-ish. As if by interacting with it, it has become more tangible. Real. Involved.

What makes you say that?

Well, before: the apple was alone, in isolation - an ideal, maybe: the ideal apple. But taking a bite out of it requires someone to do the biting, if you get what I mean.

Did you hear anything? When the bite was taken out of the apple?

Not exactly. But I can imagine the sound. The crunch. It’s a very satisfying sound. Even if it is just imaginary.

Can you taste the apple?

More like I can sense the ghost of an apple. I know what an apple tastes like, and I can conjure up some memory or remnant of that sensation.

Let’s say you’ve left this apple out in the sun for a few days. A week. What now?

The apple has changed. Shrunk. There’s mould on it and I can tell that it’s gone soft and squishy, even though I’m not touching it.

Would you take a bite out of this apple?

No.

Even though it’s purely imaginary, a construct of your mind?

Even imagining that makes me gag. So, no.

Interesting.

What about you? What do you see when you imagine an apple?

I see nothing.

Nothing?

Nothing. My eyes are closed and everything is dark. And I see nothing.

Then how are you imagining an apple? Do you see the word ‘apple’?

No. No words.

Then you think it? As in, you hear the word ‘apple’ aloud in your thoughts?

Not that, either.

Then what are you - no, how are you imagining something, if you can’t see it or hear it? Or even think the word?

I’m not really sure. All I have is the concept of an apple.

The concept?

I know what an apple is. I know the definition of ‘an apple’. And I can hold that in my mind without needing any words or images to accompany that.

Huh. Then - when you’re reading: you don’t picture the scenes, what’s happening on the page?

No. I read the words, and - well, I guess I just understand the meanings. Again: it’s the concept I see, if I can even use the word ‘see’ in this context. Maybe ‘experience’ is the better word. I ‘experience’ the concept of the apple.

That’s so interesting. What are your dreams like?

Hm. I remember my dreams, that’s for sure. I know what happens in them, how I felt, the succession of events and emotions in sequence. But no images. No… ‘sensations’.

None at all?

Not really. I could describe a dream to you. But that doesn’t mean I ‘saw’ any of what I’m describing.

Strange. I really feel like I’m ‘in’ my dreams. It’s like I’m really there.

But where is ‘there’?

Wherever it is that I’m sent when I’m dreaming.

‘Sent’?

That’s the only word I can use. Like - I’ve had dreams where it feels as if I’m a character in a movie. Or - no - like in a video game. I’m both the main character of the dream but somehow at the same time I’m looking down on myself, as if I’m also controlling my own actions from above, sort of - detached. You ever play Diablo?

Yeah, back when I was in high school.

Well, you know how you’re looking down on your character? That isometric top-down view. But you also ‘are’ the character. Both in and above.

I guess.

Well, that’s what it’s like when I’m dreaming. Not all the time. But often enough that it sticks with me.

I read somewhere that people who play too much Tetris before bed see the different shapes when they dream. Or, they are the shapes.

They dream in Tetris?

Yeah. You know, the one-by-four, the two-by-two square, that sort of thing.

But how can you dream in Tetris?

How can you dream in Diablo?

Fair enough.

It’s strange - I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine how you can imagine ‘seeing’ an apple when you imagine an apple. If that makes sense.

I can’t imagine how you can’t see an apple when you imagine an apple.

Wait - I have an idea. Close your eyes. And imagine infinity.

Infinity?

Yes, infinity.

But - I can’t.

Why not?

It’s not something I can picture. It’s not something I can even comprehend.

But you understand that infinity is a ‘thing’, right?

Is it?

Well, if we can describe it, it must be a thing.

I guess? But when I imagine it I see - nothing. Just: nothing.

Is that all too surprising? There’s an infinite amount of nothing in everything.

There is?

And to somehow ‘view’ infinity - well, you have to be outside infinity to view it, right? You have to be separate from something to look at it. And infinity - by definition - is infinite, and contains everything, so you can’t be outside infinity, can you - otherwise it’s not infinity any more. So it’s impossible to actually see it.

I’m not sure if that makes sense.

I don’t think our brains can properly comprehend these sorts of things. We’re too used to the finite, limited world. It’s like imagining the fourth dimension.

But you said yourself that if we can describe it, it must be real. Or - if not real, then at least a ‘thing’. How can there be a thing that we know exists - however theoretically - that we nonetheless cannot comprehend?

I don’t know.

And actually, I think I can picture infinity.

You can?

It’s blue.

Blue?

Just: blue. Endless blue, forever. Like a clear sky on a spring morning.

And that’s infinity?

That’s as close to infinity as you or I will ever come.

And it’s blue.

For me, at least.

Curious.

Now you close your eyes.

Okay. And what?

Imagine God.

God?

What do you see?

I don’t ‘see’ anythi -

Yeah, yeah. What do you conceptualise, then?

Uhh. I’m not sure. It’s like infinity. It’s hard to get a clear grasp. What do you see?

I see an eternity of blinding light.

Go on.

It’s a light so bright it’s almost frightening. Overwhelming. Like I’m melting away in its presence. In His presence.

How can an eternity of blinding light be a He?

I guess you’re right. But it’s not an It. And it’s not a She.

Why not?

It could be a They.

A… They?

‘They’ could be a They, I mean. The collective noun for a singular object. Or, hyper-object. An infinity that is both everything - and one point of singularity containing everything.

So God is infinity, but infinity as blinding light and not infinity as blue?

There are different sorts of infinity. Some infinities are larger than others.

A Russian nesting doll of infinities, each cascading down towards the smallest point imaginable.

That smallest point is an infinity just as large as the biggest one.

But how? How can one infinity be small enough to fit inside another and at the same time still be as infinite?

How can infinity be blue?

I don’t know. It’s only blue in your imagination.

Don’t ask me. This is all just speculation. And anyway, you were the one who started this. Getting me to picture an apple and all that.

Could an apple be infinity? Or rather: could infinity be an apple?

I guess we could say that within the apple is an infinity. An infinite infinities in every crunch.

This is making my head hurt.

What is?

Imagining all this. Trying to comprehend it. Genuinely: my head hurts.

How can imagining something make you feel real pain?

Ah, but: who said pain is real?

It certainly feels real. Heartbreak isn’t a physical afflication. But you certainly feel it - worse than physical pain, sometimes.

It’s all in the mind, I guess. Pain. Pleasure. Perception. Is it all just imagined? All of it?

Just because it’s in the mind doesn’t make it imagined. Although - I wouldn’t take a bite out of my imaginary rotten apple because even the thought of it made me gag. So even something imagined can have an effect on the real, physical me.

What are you saying? That our perceived reality is somehow dependent on our mental state?

Maybe. More that our mental state creates our perceived reality.

Well. You know what it says in the Bible. In the beginning was the Word -

The Logos.

Yes, the Logos. The Logos that was God.

And the Word, the Logos, became Flesh. The mental state became the physical form.

God created reality by thinking it up.

Exactly.

Then you’re saying all of this is just some sort of strange dream - that we only believe is reality?

Could be.

Who is the dreamer?

We are. All of us.

All of us dreaming, together, building reality.

If there was no-one left to dream, then there would be no reality.

What would there be?

Void. Infinite, endless void. Nothingness.

Sounds scary.

It is scary. I think that endless void is what existed before the Big Bang. Before the Beginning, before the Logos.

How can there even be nothing in the first place? Surely as soon as nothing is observed, it becomes a something?

Hence why something came from nothing. As soon as there was an observer: the Big Bang. Reality.

And who was the observer? The one who called forth something from nothing?

We did.

We did?

Yes: when we detected the Big Bang using our telescopes and our algorithms and our formulas and our physics.

So we made the Big Bang happen by observing it?

It had always happened. But it had always happened only once we observed that it had always happened.

My head is hurting again.

So is mine.

What about God?

What do you mean?

Was God there, at the beginning?

Well, yes. As the Logos. And the creative force. But also no: God was invented. By us. By humans, a long long time ago. When we were first coming to terms with our own mortality. Coming to terms with the size of the world, and how everything fit together. We invented God when we invented ourselves - when we became aware of our own consciousness, our own powers of abstraction, our own ability to look beyond the here and the now and imagine. God - conceptually - was just the most extreme version of that imaginative, creative power.

Then how could God be there, at the beginning, if we invented Him?

Them.

Them, I mean.

Because once we invented Them, They were always there.

We created God, and at the same time God created us. Simultaneously. Yin and Yang. Or something like that.

Yes, something like that.

And God is the creative, imaginative power of the universe?

Why not?

Then by having a sliver of that creative power - are we not a fragment of God?

Now you’re getting it.

All conscious life, across space and time: that’s God.

Yup.

Wow.

Wow, indeed.

But I don’t get it. If we are all just dreaming, dreaming reality into existence: why are we stuck here - working jobs we don’t like, subject to old age, illness, and death? Why can’t we bend reality to our will, to whatever we might want it to be?

Because we don’t realise we’re dreaming. Even us talking about it now: there’s a difference between abstract theorising and genuine - felt - understanding.

And I imagine it would take all of us - every single conscious being - to wake up, to understand the true nature of the universe: and only then can we mould reality to our will. Otherwise the illusion built by everyone else is too strong for one individual to change.

Could be.

What does ‘waking up’ look like? What does it feel like?

Hard to say. Maybe that’s what death is.

I think death is just falling back into someone else’s dream. Repeating the cycle all over again.

And we’re just stuck here: forever?

Not forever. Enough cycles and we’ll punch on through to the other side.

What other side?

How can I know? But maybe all it takes is putting a word to it - giving it form - and then: boom! You’re there.

Now that you say it like that, I think that’s already happened.

What has already happened?

The punch on through to the other side. The One to have achieved that: that’s the Buddha.

Ah. Of course. His was the final incarnation. The one to move from here to there.

Where is ‘there’?

There is here. And now. And all heres and all nows, forever, all at once.

Infinity.

Becoming infinity.

Becoming the infinite apple at the heart of eternity. And: the apple is blue.

Blue?

Yes, blue.

Of course it is.

Funny.

What’s funny?

That it’s an apple.

Why is that funny?

The Apple. The Apple that was taken by Eve, from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

I think it was originally just ‘fruit’. Somehow along the way, it got translated into apple, and that stuck.

Huh. Well. It’s a nice coincidence.

It is.

Do you believe any of this?

I’m not sure. Do you?

I’m not sure either.

Hm.

So now what?

Now close your eyes.

And?

And picture an apple. A blue, infinite apple. Now tell me - what do you see?

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