Miss Buddha (49 page)

“Doctor Lawson delivered firm proof to the
world that the reality we live is indeed only a surface reality,
but honestly, the world did not then, and still does not, want to
know.”

“Do you ever think it will?”

“Oh, I hope so.”

“But you went a step
further in the EPROM experiment, did you not? Not only did you in
essence replicate Doctor Lawson’s 1999 experiment, but you showed
that without life
looking
there is nothing there.”

“And
that
,” said Ruth right away, “is the
level of reality that we need to confront and be aware of to end
suffering.”

“There was some contention about the MIT
replication. What happened?”

“MIT initially used Flash memory instead of
EPROMs. That was the problem. Nature, at this fundamental level, is
alive enough, or resourceful enough should I say, to attempt to
revise history to keep up the façade of constancy. And when it
comes to Flash memory, it manages to do that just fine.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Flash memory is written to and erased or
revised with electricity available at the computer mother board
level. Given the right direction, available electricity does any
reading or writing that you wish. That is what the software using
the Flash memory is designed to do.

“In the case of the MIT experiment, once
they had counted their four seconds of looking away to then look
back at the screen, the photon—or nature, rather—realized that it
was being viewed again, and in essence re-materialized. And it
re-materialized not only in the present, but it went back to the
beginning of the four seconds of looking away and materialized, as
far as the trace went, from the moment—at four seconds after
firing—they began to look away.

“What I am saying is that nature revised the
last four or so seconds of history to show that it had existed all
along.

“The EPROM, on the other hand, requires
special equipment that provides a hefty dose of ultraviolet light
to erase what’s written on that chip, and we were very careful not
to provide nature any channel of acquisition of such light, so to
speak. So when we viewed the particle trace after our four seconds
of looking away, the truth—that the particle had in fact not even
existed during our looking away—was clearly displayed on the
screen. There was no revision of history, and so, there was no
trace from the moment of looking away and looking back at the
screen four seconds later.

“In other words, we looked it into
existence.”

At this point Clare fully realized what Ruth
Marten was talking about, and also why Ananda the monk finally
smiled.

“And this,” she began. Then started over.
“And this experiment has been replicated, hasn’t it?”

“At four very respected research
institutions,” said Ruth.

“My God,” said Clare.

“Precisely,” said Ruth.

“The world needs to know about this.”

“Precisely,” said Ruth again.

Clare shivered at the
clarity that formed in, or around, her—she wasn’t sure which. Then
she looked down at her copy of Ruth’s paper, found what she was
looking for. “Here you say, if I’m not misreading this, that
you
remembered
the
sequence of nature’s agreements that made the EPROM experiment
possible.”

“Yes.”

“What sequence of agreements?”

“All of this,” said Ruth, and took in the
room with a hand gesture, “didn’t just happen. Agreements were made
in order to make things persist.”

“What do you mean? Who agreed? And to
what?”

“Nature had to fool itself into
existence.”

“What?”

“Imagine a cat.”

“What, now? Me?”

“Yes. Imagine a cat.”

“Sure. Okay.”

“Close your eyes and imagine a cat. Can you
see it?”

“Yes.”

“Describe it, please.”

“Well, it’s black with a white tip on the
tail.”

“Now, you know that you have created this
mental cat, right?”

“Of course.”

“So you know that, unless you will it to, it
will never, say, fly up in your face and scratch you?”

“That’s true.”

“The cat really doesn’t have any existence
apart from what you grant it, isn’t that true?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“So, how would you, as life, make a cat, or
imagine a cat, that will do things on its own volition?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, think about it.”

Clare did think about it, and saw, quite
clearly, that as long as she knew that she had created that cat,
she could also un-create it at any moment simply by ceasing to put
it there. The only way that this cat of hers could take on any sort
of independent life was if someone else—perhaps the cat itself—had
created it.

“Precisely,” said Ruth.

Which froze Clare into absolute
stillness.

“Sorry,” said Ruth. “You were saying?”

“I wasn’t saying a thing,” said Clare. Not
at all sure now what kind of ground she was standing on.

“But you were about to.”

“Yes.”

Had Ruth, the Buddha, just read her mind?
She took a deep breath and looked her straight in the eyes. Said
nothing though. She looked over at Lars who seemed to know that
something was going on but not exactly sure what. Clare looked back
at Ruth, collected herself, and said, “As long as I know I created
the cat, it won’t harm me. If someone else created this cat and put
it here, then it’s free to act on a volition other than mine. So
either someone else has to create the cat, and give it volition, or
I have to fool myself into believing that is the case. Is that what
you’re saying?”

“Yes, that is what I am saying,” said
Ruth.

“Did you just read my mind?” said Clare. No
use holding back on this.

Ruth did not answer her question, however;
only smiled. Clare took that to mean: yes.

Instead, Ruth said, “There’s a considerable
amount of natural sleight-of-hand involved in all this,” again
indicating the room with her hand. “This surface reality we know so
well. And there is a long string of all but forgotten
agreements—what to remember, what to pretend, what is senior to
what in terms of consideration, a long and rather convoluted path
of agreements that determine how the universe we see today holds
together and works. We’ve given all these agreements a name: We
call them Natural Law.”

Then Ruth added, “The Buddha gave it another
name: Dharma.”

Which led Clare to repeat the question, or
re-state it: “And you, Ruth Marten, remember these agreements?”

“In a word, yes.”

“How is that even possible?”

Ruth knocked on the tabletop again, “How is
this even possible? Really?”

“No, seriously.”

“I am serious.”

“How can that be? How can you remember? I
have trouble remembering what I had for breakfast.” Clare needed an
answer to this question.

“All life has that capability. When life
wakes up to what it is, it remembers how it got here.”

“And you have woken up? That is how you end
your paper. ‘I am awake’ you say.”

“I am awake, yes.”

“Fully awake?”

“Fully awake.”

Clare looked down at the last page of Ruth’s
paper, and read, “Those who have woken up to this fact are called
Buddhas.” Then looked up at Ruth for a comment.

“They are,” said Ruth.

“You are a Buddha. That is what you are
saying.”

“I am saying that I am awake.”

“And you say in your paper that the awake is
a Buddha,” insisted Clare.

“I do.”

“So, what conclusion should I draw from
that?”

“Whichever comes natural to you.”

“So you are the Buddha?”

“So I am the Buddha.”

Clare was not sure where to go with this,
she had made her point, Ruth Marten was the Buddha, and she hoped
that she would agree to leave it in the final edit.

Ruth spoke next, “You are a Buddhist.”

“Yes.”

“And you believe the Dharma.”

“I do.”

“Would you believe it if I told you that I
was the Buddha? Tathagata.” then added, “Honestly, now.”

Clare had already accepted this, at least to
the degree that she was capable of. But Ruth wanted to stress the
point, she, or the Buddha, wanted to convey a message.

Clare said what would make sense for the
interviewer to say, “It would seem too implausible. Impossible,
even.”

“So, if you, a Buddhist, find it hard—if not
impossible—to see me as the Buddha, what conclusion would the
general population draw?”

“They would conclude that you are pulling
their legs.”

“I think so, too.”

“Still, you said in your paper. Quite
clearly.”

“I know. Perhaps that was a mistake. Perhaps
I was a little too optimistic.”

Then those calm, blue eyes held Clare’s for
a long time. “Tell me about your experience,” said their owner.

To Clare there was only one experience worth
telling. And Ruth Marten, the Buddha in the opposite chair, knew
about it.

“About the light?”

“Yes.”

So Clare told them. All listening intently
to her recounting of the light living the light. When she had
finished her telling, Lars—while still training the camera on
her—was the only one to speak, “You never told me,” he said. Not
accusingly, just matter-of-fact.

She looked at him, “No, Lars. I didn’t.
Would you have believed me?”

“Good point.”

“And you heard the voice
whisper
Nirvana
?”
said Ruth.

“Yes.”

“Who could that have been?” she asked.

“I have no idea. I have absolutely no
idea.”

“Have you not wondered?”

“Of course I have wondered. It’s one of the
most wondering I do.”

“Maybe Nirvana
whispered
Nirvana
,” suggested Ruth. Though it sounded more like plain statement
of fact.

Clare had never considered that. But now
did. And in the light of the experience itself, and of the current
conversation, yes, that was as feasible an answer as anything.
“Maybe,” she said. “Yes, why not?”

“Yes, why not,” said Ruth.

In the silence that followed, Clare tried to
retrace her steps to regain the thread of the interview. Then found
it:

“You said it was a mistake to imply in your
paper that you are the Buddha.”

“Yes.”

“If you could do it over, would you omit
that reference?”

“I don’t know,” said Ruth. “Those with
little dust in their eyes may still be able to connect the
dots.”

Clare nodded that she understood. Then
looked down at her notes, found her place, and asked, “Is the
bottom line of your EPROM experience that matter does not
exist?”

Ruth, with no apparent gear-shifting
problems, tapped the top of the glass table. “No, it does exist all
right, there’s no denying that.”

“But if you didn’t expect the glass top to
be there, and if you didn’t expect your hand to be solid enough to
tap it, would either then exist?”

“Now that is a good
question. That is the
right
question.”

“So, would they?”

“What did the EPROM experiment show?”

“It showed that unless we look—expecting to
find, I guess—there is nothing there.”

“And that is precisely
true. We proved that unless we look—which in scientific circles
really translates to
measure
—there is nothing there to
see, or measure.”

“Do the other institutions agree? UCLA, and
so forth.”

“Yes. They do.”

“How come we haven’t seen them tear down the
scientific halls, so to speak, heralding these findings?”

“Well, partly because they were not their
findings. Institutions like Cal Tech and MIT are very competitive.
It’s the not-invented (or discovered)-here syndrome.”

“Though you would think that findings like
these would transcend competition, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, you would, wouldn’t you?”

“Still, I’ve not seen much from either UCLA
or MIT.”

“One of the Swedish dailies published a long
KTH article about this, with a page one lead.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And the Australian school?” Clare referred
to her notes, “Queensland University of Technology? Anything from
them?”

“Not yet.”

“I mean, this is ground-breaking. I’d say
colossal.”

“Yes, I’d say colossal, too.”

“Your paper spends quite a bit of real
estate on quantum mechanics. Why is that?”

“I hope to convey the depth and importance
of the findings to the man or woman in the street,” said Ruth.
“What we established will not make as much of an impression if you
don’t know the relative situation, so to speak.”

“Einstein would have appreciated this, don’t
you think?”

“I know Bohr would. Not so sure about
Einstein.”

“Yes, he was looking for something more
logical.”

“That’s Einstein for you.”

“Should people study quantum mechanics? In
general, I mean. To get a better grasp on the significance of
non-local communication and this looking things into
existence.”

“I don’t know if that’s necessary. As long
as they recognize that this surface reality of ours is, as I said,
only the tip of the reality iceberg, and is far from actual
truth.”

“What would you suggest then? How to bring
this across? I guess the question is, how to wake people up?”

“I’ve been pondering this questions myself,”
said Ruth, looking over at Ananda, who by now had finally taken a
seat.

“Well, your experiment would go a way
towards that, wouldn’t it?”

“I hope so.”

“We’ll do our best to get the point across,”
said Clare, looking over at Lars, who nodded in agreement.