Synchronistic "Reality Check"?

As you all know my books suggest that many of us are living within an inwardly generated illusion that I term "The Bohmian IMAX". This fabricated universe, similar in many ways to the "Matrix" (and even more similar to the 'world' perceived by David Aames in the movie "Vanilla Sky" and Jacob Singer in the movie "Jacob's Ladder".

If I am right then the world I perceive as real is generated by my mind and manipulated by my Daemon. Sometimes these manipulations are placed as clues to the real nature of what is happening.

Whether I actually believe this to be the case as an absolute truth is open to debate . I know that there is strong circumstantial evidence to believe it to be so but I may be misinterpreting this information and the 'truth' is very different.

But just sometimes an event takes place that not only presents me with strong evidence that the reality around me is being manipulated ... a manipulation that is both significant and directly related to the circumstances surrounding it. These events are similar to those experienced in Philip K Dick's book UBIK. Clues to the deeper nature of reality deliberately placed to jolt the observer out of complacency.

The event that took place two evenings ago has both fascinated and (I must be honest) scared me a little bit. It really does seem to be a message. Lets see what you guys make of it.

Just before Christmas I came across a reference to a book that seemed really itladian in its content I referred to this book elsewhere. it is called "Permutation City" by Greg Egan.

I managed to source a copy and I started reading it about a week ago. Because of other distractions I have not made particularly good progress ... which is annoying because the book is exceptional. It is profoundly Dickian and creates a world in which the 'about to die' are, in the final seconds of their life, have a full body scan down to the molecular level. This scan includes all the neuronal pathways of the brain. The data is then downloaded into a super computer and the person is 'recreated' as a simulation within a world very similar to a super-realistic "Second life".

Those of you that have been on this site will know that you can create an "Avatar" of yourself and this sprite 'exists' within the cyber universe of SL. Egan's book takes this to its logical conclusion (surprisingly prescient in that he wrote this book in 1994). In the book the equivalent of an SL avatar, called a "Copy" is created from the scaned data. It creates an absolutely physically identical cyber-clone of the dying person ... a cyber-clone that also has all the memories and personality of the subject. These "Copies" are self-aware and believe themselves to be a literal continuity of the now dead subject.... does it remind you of another theory close to our hearts?

I am really enjoying the huge parallels with my "Cheating The Ferryman" theory ... particularly Egan's plot device whereby the cyberreality can be manipulated by the programmers without the knowledge of the "Copies". Things like synchronicities and coincidences are evidence of manipulation. (Another Dickian similarity is that living people can have simulations of themselves generated in the programme to directly communicate with "The Copies" - just as happens in the PKD novel - and movie "Total Recall").

Now this is where it becomes strange ... and frighteningly self-reflective.

Two das ago I met our fellow Itladian and member of this Blogsite, Ed (Its Cool To Care) Gilchrist at the Costa's coffee shop in Borders at Speke, near Liverpool.

Ed had phoned me just before lunch suggesting that we meet up. I made my way across and Ed had already arrived, two steaming mugs of welcoming capucchino (capucchini?) on the table. After a general chat things moved to isuues itladian. Ed described to me a theory he had with regard to his son, Mark. As you may be aware if you are a regular reader of this Blogsite, Mark is profoundly autistic. Ed described how he thought that Mark's concept of time seriality was different to 'normal' people. He suggested that whereas in our lives events progress from one to another, that one event effectively brings about another creates, in the 'normal' mind the illusion of time. As Ed described it "A brings about B, which leads to C". This continuity defines how we become "aware". We become sentient by perceiving past-present-future. Ed then said for Mark the sequence doesn't work. His autism facilitates are very different perception of time. Events become discrete and do not follow on from each other. In this way Mark exists in a continual present whereby events perceived six months ago meld with an event perceived 'now'. Indeed we debated that even the 'future' may be perceived in this way by Mark. This is why he becomes so confused.

A great theory and one that I hope Ed will post on soon. However that is not what intrigued and scared me ... that happened that evening as I was on my way home on the bus.

I had not read "Permutation City" for a few days but something made me pick it up and read from where I had left off. I had literally read two pages and I turned the pages over. My eye caught a red ink mark on the last paragraph of page 90 and the first paragraph of page 91. This consisted of a line and a question mark. This was weird. This was a library that had only been loaned out twice according to the stamp section in the last 18 months. One of those readers had decided, for some odd reason, to specifically mark a paragraph. But for whose attention? We all sometimes may make a note in a book but that is when the book belongs to us and we wish to check the reference again sometime in the future. No, this had been placed in the book for somebody to read .. a future reader who decides to take the book out on loan.

And then I read what the paragraph actually said ... and in horror, and then wonder, realised it was for me!!!!!! Something had manipulated the BIMAX (or at least my BIMAX) to give me an absolute categoric clue that something is not quite right about my reality.
Egan had written the following:

"In a human, or Copy being run the usual way, the physics of brain or computer meant that the state of mind at any one moment directly influenced the state of mind that followed. Continuity was a dsimple matter of cause and effect; what you thought at time A affected what you thought at time B affected what you thought at time C....But when his subjective time was scrambled, the flow of cause and effect within the computer bore no relationship whatsoever to the flow of his experience - so how could it be an essential part of it?

When the programme spelt out his life DBCEA, but it still felt exactly like ABCDE .... then surely the pattern was all, and cause and effect were irrelevant. the whole experience might just as well have arisen by chance." (pages 90-91 Permuation City by Greg Egan . Millennium Books 1994).

Now this is a 'significant coincidence' on so many levels. Indeed Egan uses almost exactly the same words that Ed did to me that very afternoon!!!!

Now the only explanation is that Ed has been involved in an elaborate and time consuming hoax on me. Of course this is impossible. Not only would Ed not dream of doing such a thing but even if he did ... how did he get hold of my copy of the book and how did he manipulate the circumstances so I would read that very page three hours later!

Is this proof or am I really losing the plot?