42
What if ultimate truth depends on one's state of consciousness?
A famous scene from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy depicts a vast, sentient computer named Deep Thought tasked with solving the riddle of "Life, the Universe and Everything". After millennia of computation it reveals that the answer is, in fact, 42.
This brilliant jab expresses both humanity's search for answers, the limits of mathematics, and perhaps Adams' own sense of futility around the idea of "ultimate truths" ...but what if the answer depends on one's state of consciousness?
"This was the culminating event of my practice, and it's value was immeasurable."
When I started meditating, I experienced a variety of unexplainable states, but none was as significant as the one I came to call "42".
It's onset was heralded by a sense that the sky itself had opened up, inverting my sense of perception like a polar projection. Whereas normally we experience ourselves as small individuals inside an infinite universe, here my awareness became infinite, and the universe shrank to almost nothing.
From this perspective all of spacetime, from the beginning of the universe to it's end was no more than a small, iridescent bubble—a beautiful, fragile thing, and yet totally insignificant compared to the scale of consciousness surrounding it—a consciousness which I was not just a part of, but was somehow all of.
"From this perspective, all of spacetime seemed no more than a small, iridescent bubble."
The daily drama of our species was so minor as to seem comical. The idea that we might be somehow special or favored was washed away by the oceanic scale. Our entire universe was a splash of paint—a playful brushstroke who's purpose—if play can be said to have a purpose—was for it to be enjoyed. Anything else was missing the point.
Through practice, this state has become readily available. My hope is that, through the vehicle of this film, others will become aware that this capability is real, valuable, and can be nurtured within them.
