Teaching Class

You know how Ben gets when he's really in his element—once he's got his students locked in and listening, he'll go on for hours. He has this gift for teaching people things they somehow already know deep down, but just haven't realized yet. John's sat through plenty of these sessions over the years, usually when they're helping lake residents prepare for whatever comes next—whether that's settling in or moving on. But this time feels different. Ben's covering territory that's completely new, stuff that even John—and he's been around longer than most—has never heard before.

"This whole lake village we're living in? It's what you'd call a perceptual bubble—one that we all share together. Now, I know it feels like you're standing on solid ground right now, breathing fresh air, maybe thinking about that delicious fried fish we're about to eat, looking out at the grass and trees and sky. But here's the thing—all of that is actually a perception created by your mind. That's what minds do, you see. They create a reality, and then you live inside that perceptual reality. The reason it all looks the same to each of us is because we've agreed that this is our reality. And for it to stay stable and not just fall apart or fade away, we all have to keep agreeing on it. We can't question it too much or the whole thing might unravel.

"That's why I say you know things but don't really know that you know them. Your mind—our collective mind—deliberately forgets about the technical details of how this world gets created. It's actually doing you a favor, because if you were constantly aware of all the little mechanics behind everything, you'd never be able to just accept it and live in it. You'd be too busy analyzing every detail to actually experience anything. Now, someone like me who's been around the block a few times—I've learned how to tinker around the edges a bit. I can question things and push boundaries without breaking the whole system because I know exactly how far I can go. That's how I can imagine one fish becoming twelve fish, and suddenly there are twelve fish on your plate. I'm not saying none of this is real—quite the opposite. I'm saying this reality is created through our collective consciousness, and we all live in this shared perceptual bubble because we agree it's real. And that agreement? That's what makes it real.

"Time and space work completely differently here than what you might expect. That's why John over there can spend over three thousand years doing essentially the same thing—fishing every single day—yet it only feels like maybe five years have passed, and look at him, his body has barely aged at all. In fact, his body hasn't aged one bit since he arrived 3,350 years ago, and he's never once gotten bored with fishing. But here's the thing—and this is important—I don't have all the answers. Something went seriously wrong a long time ago, maybe 3,000 years back. When I try to expand my consciousness and tap into the deeper truths, all I get are these faint, blurry images that don't make any sense. Normally when I reach out like that, I get clear, detailed information. But with this? It's like the universe itself doesn't know what happened—or maybe it knows but for some reason won't or can't share that information with me."

"Here's why I need your help: you were actually there when whatever this was happened. So I need you to dig deep and remember what you've forgotten, help me piece together this puzzle so maybe—just maybe—we can figure out how to fix whatever went wrong.

Are you following me so far? I don't want to rush through this and overwhelm you. It's really important that you understand what I'm telling you."

"I'm okay," Sally says, settling back in her chair. "I'm just letting you talk and letting it all soak in naturally. It's definitely more of an answer than I was expecting when I asked my question, but I'll keep listening. If you start going too fast, I'll let you know."

"How about you, son? You hanging in there okay with all this?" Ben asks, turning to Pat.

Pat glances at Sally, then back at Ben. "Hey, I'm with her. As long as she's willing to listen to this stuff, I'll stick around and listen too. I do have a question though. If all of this is consciousness like you're saying, then why aren't we conscious of it? I mean, why are we hearing this stuff for the first time if we're supposedly already conscious of it?"

Ben breaks into a grin. "Good! Now we're getting to the really important part. You know, words often fall short when you're trying to describe things that are hard to visualize or wrap your head around.

Consciousness simply is—and actually, it's everything that exists. But our personal experience of it is just a tiny fragment, like a single thread in this vast, infinite fabric of time and space. Think of it like the wake that a boat leaves as it moves across an endless ocean. That tiny thread, that wake—that's what we call our awareness. It's the portion of consciousness that we actively experience, the part we can see and feel and touch and relate to on a daily basis."

Pat frowns. "But consciousness and awareness are basically the same thing—they're synonyms. You're talking about them like they're completely different."

"Exactly what I mean about words failing us," Ben says with a patient smile. "Rather than inventing a bunch of new terms that nobody would understand, I prefer to take some familiar words and refine their meanings so we can actually use them to discuss these complex ideas without getting lost in jargon.

Here's the key difference: your consciousness doesn't start and end with just you. It's part of something much larger, which is itself part of something even greater, and so on, like nesting dolls that go on infinitely. There's no clear boundary where your consciousness stops and other people's consciousness begins, or where individual consciousness ends and the consciousness of all existence starts. This interconnectedness—this seamless web—is what we call the collective consciousness.

Your awareness, on the other hand, is quite different. It does have clear boundaries—it begins and ends within you, creating a distinct separation between your experience and everyone else's. Unlike consciousness, which just is, awareness is constantly shifting and changing. You might be aware of something right now, completely forget about it in an hour, then remember it again tomorrow. But here's the thing—that thought you forgot never actually left your consciousness. It was just temporarily outside your awareness.

"Think of consciousness like light—it exists across a continuous spectrum of frequencies, most of which are either too slow or too fast for us to perceive directly. They're essentially invisible to our normal perception.

Our awareness is like the visible spectrum of light—just that small portion in the middle of the vast range that we can actually see and work with. A huge part of our consciousness exists below our awareness threshold—we call this the subconscious. It's like all the machinery running in the basement of a building, quietly keeping everything operational while you go about your business upstairs.

Then there's another large part of our consciousness that exists above our awareness—that's the superconscious. In reality, we only directly experience a narrow slice of our total consciousness spectrum, just a small window in the middle of something far, far greater.

"Here's something that might surprise you: you're not just a single consciousness, and you're definitely not limited to just one awareness. There's what I call the primary awareness—the one you recognize as your 'I Am.' This is the part of you that you think of as 'I' or 'me.' But beyond that primary identity, there are many other conscious entities within you. Some of them may have their own awareness, yet they're not part of that central 'I Am' that you identify with.

Many of these entities get lumped into what people call the unconscious mind, but they're actually very much conscious—and quite possibly aware in their own right. They just don't belong to your personal sense of 'I.' Have you ever found yourself having an argument with yourself? Well, who exactly did you think you were arguing with?

"Now, when I talk about your awareness, I'm referring to what you can see, feel, touch, and directly experience. These are my working definitions, and I'm sure other people might disagree with them. I've had conversations with philosophers who throw around complex terms like ontology and epistemology, but honestly, those fancy words don't help much when you're dealing with practical, day-to-day matters. When you're managing a place like this, you need concepts that actually help you get things done, not debates over terminology. These definitions work for me and help me understand what's going on, so I stick with them."

"Now, this place we're in—like every place that exists—is structured by what we call dimensions. But here's the thing: dimensions aren't actually real, concrete things you can touch. They're mathematical constructs, tools we use to describe and understand how reality is organized. In truth, all of reality is one indivisible whole. But for the sake of language and working within the limits of our understanding, let's pretend that dimensions exist as separate things.

I don't expect you to remember every detail of what I'm about to tell you right away. We'll run through it fairly quickly and let it sink in over time. If you ever need to revisit any of these concepts, we can always go over them again. For now, take a look at this old sketch I made years ago. It's just one way of looking at the structure of reality—there are many different perspectives and models—but this particular one makes the most sense to me."

"So are you talking about the parallel universes theory?" Pat asks, leaning forward with interest.

"Not exactly," Ben replies, shaking his head. "This isn't the parallel universes theory you might have learned about in school or seen in movies. These domains—or universes, if you prefer that term—aren't separate realities running alongside each other with some kind of barrier between them. Instead, they interpenetrate one another completely. They exist in exactly the same space, at exactly the same time, but at different phase angles. What separates them isn't physical distance or walls—it's a phase shift, like radio stations on different frequencies."

"The word 'dimension' is honestly pretty confusing—it's kind of like the word 'love.' We use both of them to describe things that are way beyond our normal understanding, and we also use those same words to mean several different things depending on the context. For the sake of this discussion, when I say 'dimensions,' I'm actually talking about four distinct things that all interact with each other to create what we call multi-verse reality. There are the dimensions of space, the dimensions of time, the dimension of Mind, and what we call the Theta-Delta dimensions—also known as dimensional frameworks."

"The dimension of Mind is by far the most important because that's where all experience actually manifests and happens. That dimension is always where YOU truly exist, regardless of what else is going on. Some people who make these kinds of charts label the Mind dimension as the 'zero-th dimension,' and then call the ones to the left negative dimensions and the ones to the right positive dimensions. Honestly, it doesn't really matter how we number them—they all function the same way regardless of what we call them."

"Experience needs some kind of frame of reference to work with—otherwise there's nothing to experience except pure existence itself, and that's really no experience at all. So these other dimensions to the left and right of Mind provide the framework within which experience can actually occur. Levels zero, one, and two are completely abstract—nothing can really exist there in any meaningful way. They're useful for mathematics and calculations, but that's about it. The first dimensional framework where real, tangible things can actually exist is the third level. It also happens to be the most popular level—it's where we all originally came from, at least our physical forms did. Everything evolved in that third level."

"Now, dimensions can be folded up tight where we can't see what's inside them and can't really use them for much of anything, or they can be unfolded and spread out where we can move around freely and use them for creating our physical worlds. In this particular perceptual space we're in right now, there are six unfolded dimensions. Three of them define where things are positioned in relation to each other—we call those the spatial dimensions.

"Then there's something called hyper-time, which is a second temporal dimension that lets us move around within regular spacial time. It's responsible for the flexible connection we have to the fourth dimension. It's a special kind of partially unfolded temporal dimension that allows the fourth dimension of time to stretch and contract somewhat. All of these dimensions intersect with and interpenetrate the dimension of mind, which is where we put everything together and make it real. The sixth dimension—the mind dimension—is where our perceptual bubble of reality actually manifests. We each have our own little personal perceptual bubble where our individual self lives, but we're all part of a larger shared perception, like this place we're in right now. And this place is part of an even bigger place, and so on, like Russian nesting dolls.

"We use hyper-time very carefully and sparingly here because we only need just a little bit of it. We want to be able to stretch or compress the fourth dimension slightly to suit our purposes, but that's it. If we use too much hyper-time and create a twist or a fold or a loop in the fourth dimension, we might seriously disrupt the sense of cause and effect. When that happens, nothing makes sense anymore and our reality becomes completely chaotic and unpredictable. So now that I've introduced you to the concept of hyper-time, please don't experiment with it too much on your own. You could get lost in what I call 'crazy land' and have an extremely difficult time finding your way back out. Trust me, that can be a very uncomfortable and disorienting experience."

"This perceptual bubble we're living in is just one of trillions upon trillions of other perceptual bubbles that surround and interpenetrate a certain four-dimensional reality. That four-dimensional reality is much more restrictive than what we have here. It has the same three dimensions of space that we do, but only one dimension of time. So in four-dimensional reality, there's a single, unchangeable vector of time that you can't stretch or compress the way we can here. Living on that timeline is like being a surfer riding the crest of a wave—you move with the wave, but you can't change its speed or direction."

"Although each individual consciousness in that four-dimensional reality exists in its own little personal perception bubble, they're all actually sub-domains of one massive perceptual bubble that contains all entities. Everyone agrees on this shared reality without ever thinking about it consciously. In fact, they can't even think about it if they wanted to, because the mechanism is completely invisible to them. It's a much more restrictive existence compared to what we have here."

"If you wanted to teleport in that four-dimensional world—which is technically possible—you'd face some pretty insurmountable challenges. You'd either have to get trillions upon trillions of other consciousnesses within the Mind dimension to agree that you can do it, which simply isn't going to happen, or you'd have to elevate your own consciousness to a level high enough to override the collective will of trillions upon trillions of other beings. And that's pretty much not going to happen either. This four-dimensional world, restrictive as it is, is actually the home that you remember. It's where your personal stories took place, and it's the place you're longing to return to."

"This reality you're experiencing right now is tightly connected to that four-dimensional place, and specifically to a location within that space—a large rock known as a planet where you used to live. It looks exactly like this place we're in now, and that's because we've deliberately modeled this environment after that other place you came from. This reality we're in could take the form of anything your mind can imagine, but you've imagined the only thing you really know well, which is your original home—that four-dimensional planet. That planet is called Earth."

"Normally, after resting here for a while, people return for another journey to planet Earth and live another life there as an entity with a four-dimensional body. Part of my job here, in addition to managing this little perceptual bubble we're all sharing, is to help prepare people for their return trip when they're ready. But now something has gone really, really wrong. Planet Earth is missing—or at least, I can't locate it anywhere."

Sally stares down at the floorboards for a long time, processing everything she's just heard. When she finally looks up at Ben, her face is pale. "Okay, I am totally freaking the fuck out right now, Ben, and I feel sick to my stomach. What the hell is going on? My head is spinning, I'm nauseous, I think I might actually throw up, and honestly part of me is wondering if you're completely full of shit. But at the same time, what you're saying does explain a few things that never made sense before."

"Very good, Sally," Ben says with an understanding smile. "This is completely normal. The physical discomfort you're feeling right now is actually a memory from when you were connected to a physical body in Earth reality. Disorientation in a physical body causes dizziness and nausea, and often makes you feel like you need to vomit. Think about it this way—let's say when you were ten years old, your parents suddenly told you without any warning that you were moving to a completely different country. The shock, the disorientation caused by suddenly learning that the world you knew was about to become totally different—that might make you sad or even physically sick. Since you still have the form of a body here, that's the kind of reaction you're having now. I'm going as slowly as I can to help you get accustomed to this new understanding, but there will probably be some continuing discomfort for a while. Eventually though, you'll get past it. You'll learn to think beyond it because it won't need to be part of your perception anymore. Remember, your perception is your reality, and you can learn to control it."

Pat, who's looking just as queasy as Sally, manages to work up the courage to ask the question that's weighing on all their minds. "Okay, let's say for a minute that you actually know what you're talking about. So where the hell are we exactly? Is this some sort of shared consciousness thing, or shared unconscious? How did we get here in the first place? What are we, really? Are we lost? Are we supposed to be somewhere else? What the hell is actually going on? Are we... are we dead?"

Ben considers the question thoughtfully for a moment, then responds, "Well, I don't think this is hell, unless you specifically want it to be. And I'm sitting here looking at you right now, so you're certainly not dead. I can tell you this much though—what you think you are, you're not.

"When I first arrived here, I was just as confused as you are now. We weren't at this lake, actually—it didn't even exist yet. Penny and I—Penny's my wife, by the way—found ourselves waking up in a beautiful southern-style bedroom in a hotel along a busy street in a bustling, lively town. We went downstairs to the front desk and started asking questions, and they directed us to talk to a man named Michael, who we found in the saloon. He helped us remember bits and pieces of where we came from and explained what our new responsibilities were going to be here. It turned out that we had been living in Earth bodies on a plantation in a lovely part of planet Earth. There was a terrible war going on, and the military had taken over our bottom floor for troops, so we'd moved upstairs. The soldiers thought it would be a good idea to store explosives in our basement. That turned out to be a very, very bad idea. Our last memories were of gunfire and enemy troops storming through the house. We don't remember getting shot or hearing any explosions or anything like that, but our next clear memory was waking up in that hotel bed in that strange town."

Pat's face brightens a bit. "Well, that's simple then. We've somehow been transported through a trans-dimensional conduit and we're in a different dimension than Earth is in. We just need to find a conduit that can get us back."

Ben chuckles. "Remember what I said about the word 'dimension' being overused and confusing? You're making a good point, but we're actually in the same dimensional framework as Earth—just at a different level of dimensionality. That's quite different from being in a completely 'different dimension.'"

"What you're thinking of involves different dimensional frameworks, or Theta-Delta dimensions. Let me show you what I mean. Imagine I take this sketch of mine and put a pin through the mind dimension level and stick it to the wall. First, I should clarify that it's actually an error to call it 'the mind dimension' because it's really a level within a specific dimensional framework—the one we call Theta Delta Zero, Zero. Now, let's say we rotate this entire sketch six degrees counter-clockwise. Now we're talking about a completely new dimensional framework that has all the same levels as this one, but it's entirely separate. When we rotate it like this, we say we're rotating it through the Theta axis, and it becomes dimension Theta Delta minus Six, Zero. This new dimensional framework isn't a copy of ours at all—it's a completely independent reality that doesn't interact with ours in any way, unless you use one of those trans-dimensional conduits you mentioned. And there are quite a few of them—at least a thousand different frameworks, maybe more, as you rotate the sketch around through the Theta axis."

"Now let's say I hold the top and bottom of the sketch and, leaving it at that minus Six Theta rotation, rotate it around the other axis—say, plus eleven degrees. This is the Delta axis rotation. So that particular dimension would be called Theta Delta minus Six, Eleven. There are at least a thousand frameworks available by rotating through the Delta axis as well. If we rotate all the way through both Theta and Delta, that gives us over a million potential dimensional frameworks—completely separate realities that we can theoretically access right now. Actually, there are way more than that, but this is enough to wrap our heads around for the moment."

"How did we end up being Zero Zero? Are we the original?" Pat wants to know.

"We got labeled Zero Zero simply because we created this whole dimensional classification system here, and we based everything relative to this particular framework. Other frameworks undoubtedly have completely different ways of explaining all this stuff—their own terminologies and reference points. Here are the important things to remember about these dimensional frameworks: First, there are more of them than we could ever want to visit, even if we had infinite time. Second, and this is crucial—they all intersect at exactly one level, and that level is Mind."

"Okay, the fish are done!" John announces, interrupting the heavy conversation. "Let's put a pause on all this mind-bending talk, forget about feeling sick for a while, and enjoy some good food. Looks like we've got plenty of time to work through all of this, and there doesn't seem to be much else around here except time." John sets plates on the table along with a platter holding a dozen fresh-cooked fish, all breaded up nice and fancy the way he always prepares them for guests.

"John?" Sally asks as they start to eat. "Do you remember how you got here?"

"You know, I was just thinking about that very thing," John replies, settling into his chair. "I remember my last day at the lake in that other place perfectly. I was retired from firefighting, but I still kept my room at the firehouse out of habit. I was headed up the road to the lake with my fishing pole, looking forward to a peaceful day, when I started having that same nauseous feeling and getting really weak in the knees. I sat down on a rock for a minute to catch my breath, and pretty soon the feeling passed. I got up and started walking toward the lake again, except when I looked around, I wasn't there anymore. I was here instead. Ben met me on the road—almost like he was expecting me—and showed me a nice little place I could have if I wanted it. Then he took me down to the lake and helped me find a good spot where there were plenty of fish to catch. Other than meeting new arrivals every now and then, that's pretty much all I've done since—fish, fry them up, and tell stories about the old days. It's been a good life, peaceful and simple, but now I'm starting to wonder what it's all really about. Is this it? Am I going to fish and fry and tell stories about a world that's long gone forever? I know Ben told me when I first got here to just relax and take it easy because I was going to be here for a very long time. He said my only real job here was to help him get people ready for their next journey when they decided they were ready to move on from this place. But until right now, it honestly never even entered my head to think about moving on myself. What is the next step, anyway? Ben, you seem to be the expert around here. Where do we go from here?"

Ben takes his time thinking it over, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of fish. Finally he says, "For you, John, I know that someday you'll be ready to move up to a new level—that's just the natural progression. As far as these young folks are concerned, and the whole question of visiting Earth again, I honestly wish I knew the answer. Michael showed me how to leave that town—which was a huge perceptual bubble with almost a million members—and create this smaller one from my memories. He taught me how to make it big enough and stable enough for Penny and me to live in comfortably. Each new member we've gotten over the years has added to its stability and contributed new details to its reality. From time to time, one of our members would get restless and ready to move on, and we'd sit down together to figure out what to do and where they should go next. Michael would stop by to finalize the plans and get them started on their new path. But I haven't seen Michael in a very, very long time—longer than I care to think about. I guess the next logical step is to find Michael and see what he knows."

"How do we do that?" Sally asks.

"We don't—you do," Ben says, pointing at the three of them. "I've got to stay here and keep this place running properly. Since I created it, I have to remain here or it will start to lose cohesion and change very rapidly into something it was never meant to be. So you three are going to have to go find Michael yourselves. He doesn't respond to a summons—believe me, I've tried to call him many times over the years. He's different that way. He just shows up when it fits his schedule and serves his purposes. So you'll have to go track him down. My bet is that he's back in that original town where Penny and I first met him. I think he created that place, so I'm pretty confident you can find him there. I'll show you how to get there safely. All three of you should go—you two young ones, and John to keep an eye on you and make sure you don't get into any trouble. John's an old soul with a lot of perspective and experience, and he can keep you two from doing anything too foolish. Penny and I will keep watch over you from here—Michael showed us how to do that kind of remote monitoring. If you get into serious trouble, we'll summon you back immediately. So hold on to your hats, kids. Something tells me this is going to be one hell of a wild ride."