The Tenuous Line of Sanity by Frank Siegrist - HTML preview

I am a quiet boy. I have always been a quiet boy.

If I had been too boisterous, perhaps I would have been diagnosed with attention deficit and hyperactivity syndrome and given pills. But I was quiet, and nobody worries about a quiet child, quite the opposite, so I just suffered in silence.

My parents are artists. My mother plays the flute and my father plays the piano. They are both teachers at the conservatory. They also give concerts and go touring as a trio (with a third artist playing the cello). They are not world-famous, but they are good. Their tours don’t make them rich, but they travel the world with their performances covering the expenses. That’s not bad. I guess I admire them for that…

They never wanted more than one child. Their music was too important for them. When they went touring, they regularly left me with a great-aunt who had never married or had any children of her own. She was an artist too, a sculptor. She made various busts of me, of me the innocent child. I hope I didn’t really look like those busts. Or if I did, that explains why I was bullied in school rather than being a bully myself… Not that the busts were ugly. On the contrary, they were angelic. Just not what a boy would want to look like.

This great-aunt was a kindly old lady, but she had a hard and bitter core deep down. She tried to teach me sculpting but soon declared I wasn’t talented. And if I rather wanted to play on the newly created « adventure » playground close to her house, she declared it was for street-children, not the likes of me. So when I was with her in her artist’s workshop, I had to content myself with playing with plaster, untalented though I was.

I also remember how she combed my hair every morning first thing out of bed. She did it decidedly, with bold strokes, as she did everything in her life, as if she worked on another piece of plaster, always plucking a few hairs out (without meaning to, of course).

I remember spending a lot of time at her place just missing my parents. But I doubt my parents missed me. They always looked so shiny and happy when they went touring! My mother with a fresh perm and liberally painted with make-up (which was necessary to look good on stage, because the spotlights could make you look pale otherwise, as she once explained). My father impressive in his dress-coat! Who would have guessed, seeing him dressed up like that, that he could manage three-tone farts in the bathroom in the evening when I was supposed to fall asleep in my bedroom next door?

A quick kiss smelling of expensive perfume or aftershave from each of my parents and off they were in a breeze, leaving me with the kindly great-aunt.

When she got particularly inspired, she would simply forget I was there altogether. I remember spending many hours dead bored in her artist’s workshop, sitting next to the window, looking out or just studying the dust on the window-sill…

She had an old sofa somewhere. Maybe it was a place for models to sit in various positions, I don’t know. My great-aunt certainly wouldn’t have approved of me jumping around on it, but she didn’t care if I sat or lied on it. And lying on my tummy, trying to wriggle into a comfortable position (the plush-covered seat was somewhat convex, so you had a tendency to roll off, not at all like in a bed in which you rather sink in), I had this peculiar sensation… It was like… It was like a hot summer day at the beach… Sparkling fresh water, and lots of other kids splashing and jumping around in it…

I don’t know how that old sofa could possibly remind me of a beach, but that’s how it was. And if I wriggled on it long enough, I would get a sudden discharge of bliss, and then feel blissfully drowsy, ready to go to sleep.

The first time my mother caught me wriggling the same way on my carpet in my little room at home, she got very cross. Well, at first she just asked me what I was doing, and when I couldn’t answer she got cross. She told me not to do that again. When she caught me at it again another time, she put up a picture of my father above my bed and told me he would be watching me now.

Years later when I asked her why she had done that, she couldn’t remember the whole thing at all. She felt I was just inventing things again…

My parents both being musicians, it was only natural that I would be a musician too. So of course I had to learn to play an instrument. For some reason the violin was chosen for me. And supposedly I was talented. It was nothing but hard work most of the time, but occasionally I did sink into the music, draw out a note a little longer than necessary… And then, to my surprise, I was praised for it instead of being scolded and even told that this was « interpreting » the music!

So this was a discovery for me - that not everything that feels good is necessarily forbidden. Or maybe music is the exception. An exception for which you have to work very, very hard. Because playing a musical instrument is most of all hard work. It’s hard work aside from school, when other children play around on playgrounds that are supposedly only for « street-children » (as my great-aunt would have said).

Much later I discovered another such pleasure - flying in a sailplane! Watching sailplanes from the ground as they gracefully made their rounds in the sky, I thought it would be pure bliss to glide in the wind in utter silence like this. When I was taken up for the first time, I was surprised that I was totally wrong about the silence. On the contrary, the gushing of the wind and the creaking of the wings were a constant storm in the ears! Realizing that my first vision had been wrong, I quickly lost interest in sailplanes and was fascinated by motor-planes instead.

My parents paid for my first lessons. I was an only child and they both had a good income, so there was money to spare. I learned about the winds, the up-drafts, the pressure differences on the wings… It was a bit like learning to play the violin - a lot of hard work with the promise of momentary bliss at the end. But there was a crucial difference - I could never tell my classmates in school about my violin, because they would just have laughed at me. But I could tell them about my learning to fly, and they were even impressed by it. Not just impressed, but jealous!

When I grew older, it became clearer and clearer what I would become. I would become an airplane pilot! My parents were not happy about this. With a flutist as a mother and a pianist as a father it would have been so fitting that I should become a violinist! But this was not to come about. I was going to be an airplane pilot!

And that’s what I am now! I am not the captain yet, but I’m the second-in-command, the co-pilot! And in front of me the countless gauges and LEDs are all showing what they ought to be showing. I just need to glance at them to know that everything is in order, while my parents wouldn’t know about the first one what it is for. They may be greater musicians than I am, but they don’t know anything about THIS!

So am I happy now?

To even ask this question in a sense almost means that you’re already sort of answering it, doesn’t it? If I were happy, would I be wondering about it? I guess not. If I were happy, I would just be happy.

I moved from small planes to bigger planes and yet bigger planes, and now I’m sitting at the controls of an airliner!

But what I have really been looking for, all these years, is that elusive sensation I used to get on my great-aunt’s sofa. In the meantime I’ve worked out what it was about, of course. And I’ve worked out that it’s something that should come for free, unlike flying or playing the violin. Something everybody has a right to.

And yet for me it doesn’t come for free. It doesn’t come at all. I guess in my mind I still have the picture of my father that my mother put up above my bed, telling me he would be watching me. So it doesn’t work, I can’t let go. Or maybe I could if I had someone to do it with. But I don’t. In my mind, something like that just can’t come for free, so I tried paying for it. But even after paying, I just could’t let go, and it just didn’t work. The other person just wasn’t there for me. Anyway, she didn’t know me. She had just been paid to let me have her body, and it wasn’t her fault or her responsibility if I wasn’t able to do anything in the end. In fact, she simply didn’t care. Who can blame her?

And yet this filled me with hatred. A hatred all the greater since I didn’t exactly know against whom it was directed. Against my father supposedly watching me? Against my mother who had put up his picture there? Against the woman who just couldn't satisfy me? Or against all of them? Or just against myself for not being normal?

If there is a God, why would he let me suffer like that? How had I deserved this?

I know you can’t negotiate and haggle with God, but I still tried. Dear God, please give me sex at last, or I’ll do something very, very, very BAD!

Surely, if I planned to do something really outrageously preposterous or preposterously outrageous, He wouldn’t let me do it. He would intervene in the last minute. It wasn’t possible that it should be otherwise.

Did I really think that way? Was this naive belief in God really part of my motivation? Or did I just want to take revenge on humanity and the whole world? Did I just want to show them that they had ignored me for too long and were going to pay for it now?

Really, it’s strange that in retrospect, after all that careful planning, I couldn’t even clearly explain why I had done it. Perhaps I had really just gone insane, as the media would have it.

But all the careful planning, was that really the work of an insane person? Perhaps it was, and that means there is more to insanity than just being raving mad!

I had actually gone to see a psychiatrist, believe it or not. I had told him a bit about my not-so-easy childhood and my current depression. I hadn’t told him anything about my fantasy of killing three-hundred people, of course! Telling a psychiatrist about your sick fantasies is the quickest way to cut your career short! (And not telling your psychiatrist about them and then still acting them out is the quickest way to cut THEIR career short…)

So I hadn’t gone into that much detail, just complained a bit about feeling down, and he had prescribed a pill of what he called the SSRI-class… I must admit, this pill lifted the numbness somewhat. While earlier there had been a big, black cloud surrounding me, I now felt able to do something about my negative feelings, and I started planning the deed!

So perhaps I actually shouldn’t have taken that pill. Perhaps depression is not so maladaptive after all - it protects you from doing something bad when you have too many negative feelings to do anything good. We live in a world where every ailment quickly gets mended with a pill. But sometimes it’s not the ailment that’s maladaptive, but rather lifting it with a pill. Fever is a case in the point - raising body-temperature helps the body fight off invading bacteria or viruses. Lowering fever with pills can actually be counter-productive and make you stay ill longer. Of course fever isn’t very comfortable. Neither is depression. But perhaps depression, like fever, has its role to play, and just getting rid of it without knowing the root cause may be counter-productive.

But that’s not what I was thinking just then, sitting at the controls of the airliner…

You have an incredible view from the cockpit of an airliner! A real round view! Shortly after takeoff in Barcelona, we were already flying over the Pyrenees. This is where I had done my first paragliding course, long ago. I know every peak here, although seeing them from the cockpit of an airliner before it has even reached its cruising altitude is something else! The highest peaks are snow-capped even in summer, and you see the snow sparkling in the sunlight like icing on a cake as you drift over and above them!

I knew this would be the point when the captain leaves the cockpit to go for a sort of celebration piss. He does that every time after a successful takeoff. Perhaps he also wants to show the second-in-command that he fully trusts him by leaving him alone at the controls for a while.

So all I did was lock the door behind him and initiate a descent.

There’s a code to get into the cockpit, and of course the captain knows that code. But ever since the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre, the code can now be overruled from inside the cockpit! You can actually lock out the captain!

I suppose this mechanism was invented to lock out terrorists. But if you are the terrorist yourself, it allows you to lock out anyone else so that you can quietly finish your terrorist job!

Overruling the code only works for five minutes at a time, and after five minutes the person outside can try again. Just to be overruled again, of course!

After his first try, the captain wasn’t even worried. He knocked on the door discreetly, thinking that there had probably been a malfunction and not wanting to panic anybody. Since I didn’t answer, he tried the code once again and the code was overruled a second time. By now he noticed we were descending, although I doubt any of the passengers had noticed that anything was wrong yet. He didn’t bang against the door just yet, not wanting to rouse a general panic.

In the end he had no choice, though, and he was banging against the door with all his might, soon to be joined in his efforts by the flight attendants. And now there were panic-stricken shouts and cries in the background too.

Well, good luck with trying to break open the cockpit door! It was made not to let any terrorists in, after all!

The only reason I could run my little stunt was because cockpit doors had been reinforced and fitted with a locking mechanism after the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York. I was well aware of that, so I couldn’t help comparing my little endeavour with those attacks. While I was taking revenge on the World for still being a virgin at almost thirty years of age, those terrorists had done it in the name of their God. So wasn’t their endeavour rather more « noble » than mine? Wasn’t mine rather pitiful and selfish in comparison?

Well, I’m running the risk here of offending those « noble » terrorists who attacked the World Trade Centre in New York, but I think their motivation was probably not all that much more « noble » than mine, after all. Their religion is a moralizing religion all about chastity, modesty and helping the poor. They hate Westerners for being infidels and not being chaste and modest enough.

The organizers in the background have political motives when they organize terrorist attacks. But the ones actually carrying them out (and giving their own lives in the process) have more personal reasons, I believe. And those reasons must surely include that they simply hate the West with its liberal mores!

And in that respect, they are exactly like me! I hate everybody for the same reason, because they’re all having fun without me! Because they’re not chaste, while I have no other choice than to be chaste because I don’t know how to talk to girls!

Which is not the whole truth, actually. I don’t specifically not know how to talk to girls. I don’t know how to talk to anybody. I have no girlfriend, but I have no friends of my own gender either. I have no friends at all. I just have my parents, my instructors and teachers… And otherwise I am alone.

So anyway, I would punish a plane-load of people for not being chaste! In that I was exactly the same as those terrorists who had attacked the World Trade Centre!

(I didn’t realize at the time that the airplane also contained three babies who certainly couldn’t be blamed for not being chaste - but I doubt this fact would have made me change my mind at the time, even if I had been aware of it…)

Come to think of it, most terrorists get recruited from among teenagers or young adults facing their first failures in life and not coming to grips with that. Being a migrant in a foreign country where you’re a bit lost can foster a feeling of helplessness, which makes becoming a terrorist attractive.

This thought led me to some more musing…

In Mediterranean countries there is a big gap between the world of men and the world of women. These two worlds don’t mingle. Self-respecting men there are proper machos, and they have nothing to do with the world of women. Perhaps that’s because of the warm climate. Medlars grow right into people’s mouths, and even during winter nights the temperature outside stays above freezing, so parents don’t need to cooperate so much to raise their children - their children survive anyway!

Higher up north, it’s different. Winters are harsh and cold, food has to be stored in advance, couples need to work together if they want their children to survive. That’s why men and women can’t allow themselves to live in separate worlds like in the south, and one gender can’t allow itself to ruthlessly dominate the other, since they are so dependent on each other. That’s why gender equality is self-evident in the north, especially high in the north like Scandinavia. Oppression of women is equally self-evident in the south.

Of course southern women still manage to carve out a place for themselves in southern society somehow, but in any case the world of men and the world of women remain strictly separate there. They will never mingle like in Scandinavia (where they even have mixed-gender saunas - even just thinking about all those naked girls makes my mouth water!).

It is easy to blame all this on religion, but actually religion is just superimposed on this tendency, and Mediterranean countries may be Catholic or Muslim, their mentality is exactly the same - namely, they are phallocratic!

The worlds of women and men being strictly separate in the south, women and men have a hard time meeting and getting to know each other, which explains why their marriages are often arranged rather than inspired by love.

Of course a boy might still spot a girl he likes, but he can’t just propose to her. The correct thing to do, in this case, is to talk it over with his mother. His mother will talk it over with the mother of the girl, and if the two mothers reach an agreement, the idea will be put forth to the fathers who will then haggle about the dowry. If they reach an agreement too, the girl will finally be told to marry the boy. In progressive families she may still be allowed to say no (if she has a very important reason to do that).

If such a boy from the south for some reason ends up in a northern country, he will feel quite lost there, because things are done differently in the north. In the north he is expected to walk up to the girl on his own and to chat her up on his own. And of course he doesn’t know how to do that having never been prepared for anything like that!

Girls from the south, on the other hand, adapt much more easily. They probably enjoy it that boys would come up to them to woo them instead of just being told by their parents whom they must marry!

Unless they go so far up north that they are expected to chat up boys by themselves, in which case they might feel quite lost too. But if they don’t go quite so far north, girls will generally find it easier to adapt than boys.

So that’s what happens when a southern family goes to live up north: the girls go to University, find a boyfriend, and flourish as they might not have been able to in their home-country. Boys, on the other hand, feel completely lost and might even become terrorists! Or they might just kill their sisters (of whom they are jealous, of course), in what is called an « honour killing », for not being chaste.

In the end, all those terrorists have exactly the same motivation as I do too - they see everybody around them having fun while themselves being excluded, and they get jealous!

Some say they do it in the name of God.

And so do I, in a sense - after all, I have this insane hope that I could force God’s hand! I’m really doing it for Him so that he would stop me in the last minute by letting me have sex at last!

And in some strange way, you could argue that was exactly what happened in the end. But that came later.

For the time being, the screams behind me, muffled through the cockpit door, reached pandemonium-level, and then we crashed!

I am a ghost now. Or in any case I don’t know what else to call myself. Perhaps « ghost » isn’t the right word, after all. I’m not sure human beings can sense me. And if they can’t sense me, then the word « ghost » surely wasn’t invented for the likes of me, since nobody would know about their existence…
But I don’t know what else to call myself, so let’s stick with « ghost ».
I was a human being once, then I died. I don’t know what generally happens to people when they die. Of course I had never died before, and even though I had seen a couple of my grandparents die (which was the closest encounter with death I had had so far), they of course hadn’t come back to tell me afterwards what it was like. So maybe what happened to me is quite normal. Maybe it’s what happens to everybody when they die (but then there should have been about three hundred other ghosts around me right now, and yet I was completely alone…).
It was like this : at first I didn’t even realize that I had died. I went on seeing and hearing things as before. Only the perspective seemed strange – I seemed to be able to see myself from above, just as though I were hovering above my body (or what was left of it, in any case). For quite a while I just stayed there, not daring to move away. But then, at some point, I got bored of it and flew off. Well, « flying » isn’t the right word either, of course. I don’t think I actually moved. Since I don’t seem to be made of anything tangible, there isn’t anything in me that can « move » either. I guess I just shifted my attention, my focus.
As I said, I don’t think I can be sensed by living people. In any case they look right through me. But I can still influence them somehow. I can slip a thought into their minds.
Now if the thoughts in the minds of people are the results of neurotransmitters being sent from one brain-cell to another, then it would seem that I can still move material objects after all, namely neurotransmitters. And if I can do that, then I should also be able to shift bigger objects. But so far I haven’t discovered how to do that. Perhaps I can’t. And when I influence people’s thoughts, I don’t have the feeling I’m moving around neurotransmitters. I don’t have any mental representation of those neurotransmitters at all. It’s rather like I was « talking » to them. When you talk to someone, I’m sure you don’t have a mental image of shifting their neurotransmitters about either, do you ?
Well, it’s the same for me. I somehow manage to slip into the minds of people. I see what they see, I sense what they feel, and I can influence that. But I don’t really know how I’m doing that.
And while we’re at it, we might as well get all philosophical : how do I know that I’m really influencing people’s thoughts ? How do I know they wouldn’t have had the particular thought I slipped into their minds anyway ?
Maybe I’m just a set of thoughts, and these thoughts are the results of neurotransmitters sloshing around in THEIR brains ?
Though this hypothesis still couldn’t explain everything, you know. Because I’m not stuck in any one particular person’s mind. I know things, and I can carry this knowledge from one mind to another. This still puts me in some kind of higher league. I still seem to be something more than just some real person’s thoughts. It seems I am still my own thoughts, and these thoughts are not bound to any particular brain, or in any case I can’t see how.
So I am a ghost. I really don’t see how else I should put it !

As I explained, there is a lot I don’t understand. Maybe there is more I don’t understand now than there was when I was a living, breathing human being. As a human being made of flesh and blood, I had quite a Cartesian way of thinking. I thought I knew things. Things I don’t know anymore. Namely where thoughts reside. I used to think I knew they resided in the brain. Now I don’t have a brain anymore, but I still seem to be having thoughts…
So this has become very unclear to me.
On the other hand, my current thoughts might still be residing in various brains, just not always the same ones. But there would still need to be a link between these disparate brains, a link that « ties me together », so to speak…
You know, something I remember having heard in a statistics-class at university, long ago before I decided to become a pilot, now comes back to me : whatever has an above-zero probability of happening, however small this probability may be, will happen an infinite number of times given an infinite amount of time.
Is time truly infinite ? Is space infinite too ?
If it is, then anything that has the tiniest chance of ever happening MUST really happen at some point in space and time. Not just at some point, but at many points, actually. However unlikely it is that the dice will roll and give you that particular result, if you throw them a sufficient number of times in a sufficient number of places, you will get that particular result at some point, and if you keep throwing the dice, you can get it as often as you like. Given an infinite amount of space and an infinite amount of time, ANY result, HOWEVER unlikely, will happen not just once or twice, but an INFINITE number of times !
This means that the world with all the people in it, since it could appear once, obviously must be able to appear a second time too, and a third… However unlikely it may be for such a world to appear, given an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount of space, it just has to appear again. Not just once, but an infinite number of times !
And any thought that can theoretically appear in a person’s mind, given an infinite number of worlds with an infinite number of people in them, will obviously appear in someone’s mind somewhere. Not just once, but an infinite number of times.
So whatever thought I am slipping into someone’s mind, someone somewhere was going to have that thought anyway. So maybe I am not slipping it into anybody’s mind at all. Maybe I am just moving to the place where it occurred to a person anyway, since such a place must obviously exist if space is truly infinite…
And even if I want some particular person to have this particular thought, there is no problem. That particular person, since he could exist once, obviously can exist a second time too, as well as a third… However unlikely the appearance of a particular person in a particular circumstance may be, as long as you have infinite time and infinite space, it WILL happen. Not just once, but over and over and over again.
So if I want a particular person in a particular circumstance to have a particular thought, all I must do is move to the particular place and time where this particular person really has this particular thought.
And maybe that’s all I’m doing when I « influence » people’s thoughts…

Such philosophical musings are bound to blow your mind away if you give in to them for too long.
But you see, while some things have become much unclearer for me ever since I became a ghost, others on the other hand have become much clearer.
A subject that I studied for a while as an undergraduate student and that seemed quite troubling to me at the time now seems to have cleared up in my mind. I mean Quantum Mechanics.
Within the framework of this theory, particles can be in one state and its opposite at the same time. Until you measure them, which somehow forces them to « make up their minds » and clearly adopt one state or the other.
When the particle « makes up its mind », this is called « collapse » of the superposition of states. The question is, of course, why the superposition collapses like that. Does the particle « know » it is being measured ? Is that why it « makes up its mind » ? Or is it the mind of the experimenter that somehow forces the particles to clearly be in one state or another rather than a superposition of several states ?
As a ghost, I think I now understand what really happens : there is no « collapse » of the superposition. The superposition merrily goes on. Except that the superposed states have now given rise to superposed measurements measured by superposed observers. Both states, which existed as a superposition, still exist as a superposition. Both have been measured, so the two measurements are superposed too. And the observers who did the measurements exist in a superposition too. The observer who measured one state is superposed on the observer who measured the other. They both exist, superposed on each other.
But if you are one of those observers, then you are unaware of the other. For you, it looks as though the superposition « collapsed ». In actual fact, nothing collapsed at all. It’s just that you entered the superposition. There are two « you »s, superposed on each other, but not communicating, so that each one of you just sees one state, not the other. That’s why, to you, the superposition seems to have collapsed !
Of course this interpretation isn’t new – it’s called the « Many Worlds » interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. I just hadn’t really understood it before. After all, for a living and breathing human being, the whole idea of the universe splitting in two at the tiniest excuse seems ludicrous. But once you’re a ghost like me, you realize that the whole idea of « splitting in two » is the wrong way to picture what really happens. After all, if time and space are truly infinite, then every possible universe exists ANYWAY !
If you want to win the lottery twice in a row (or even just once) there is admittedly little chance that it will happen in your lifetime. But if you play the lottery for a million years, the chance of winning becomes bigger. If you play the lottery for ever and ever, it eventually becomes UNAVOIDABLE that you would win. It even becomes unavoidable that you would win twice in a row, or even three times in a row. With all eternity ahead of you, it’s bound to happen at some point !
Actually it’s not just bound to happen at some point. It’s bound to happen again and again, an infinite number of times !
That’s what it really means when you say that an occurrence with an above-zero chance of occurring will occur an infinite number of times. Any occurrence that ever occurred, however unlikely it was, must have an above-zero chance of occurring, else it couldn’t ever have occurred in the first place. And with infinity ahead of you, anything that occurred once must necessarily occur again. Not just once, but again and again and again, an infinite number of times.
This means that all possible worlds exist, not just once, but an infinite number of times.
And when you consider this, the hypothesis that the world supposedly splits in two every time a Quantum Mechanical state « collapses » becomes much less worrying…
All these worlds exist anyway. There isn’t really any real splitting going on at all. Just a moving between worlds.

And, as I suddenly realized, this also explains another problem with the « Many Worlds » interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that is often used as an argument against it - if, during the collapse of a superposition, one outcome is more likely than the other, how could this be explained by the universe splitting in two (which would mean that each outcome has the same probability as the other, since you would split in two yourself and each you would end up in one or the other universe, both being equally likely)?

The answer is that the universe doesn’t just split in two. It splits into as many universes as you like. Or rather, it doesn’t even split at all, since all these different universes exist anyway. Some of these universes will represent the unlikely outcome of the collapse of the superposition, but twice as many (or three times as many, or whatever the ratio is supposed to be) universes will represent the likely one, with the ratio between the two corresponding to the relative probability of one outcome versus the other.
To me, the « Many Worlds » interpretation also explains another strange fact about Quantum Mechanics, namely how two particles can remain entangled even over great distances.
To explain « entangled » particles, let’s say you have a pair of shoes, a left shoe and a right shoe. You put each in a shoe-box, and you start mixing around the shoe-boxes till you don’t remember which is which anymore. Now you send one shoe-box (which could contain a right shoe or a left shoe, both possibilities being equally likely) to the other side of the universe to a waiting friend.
Okay, now each of you has a shoe-box with a fifty percent chance of containing a right shoe and a fifty percent chance of containing a left shoe.
Now you open your shoe-box and let’s say you find a left shoe in it.
If your friend at the other side of the universe had opened his or her shoe-box at the exact same moment, he or she would have found - yes, you guessed it ! – a right shoe in his or her shoe-box.
This means that somehow, through the magic of entanglement, the result of opening your shoe-box was immediately communicated to the other side of the universe, so that the shoe-box there, instead of having only a fifty percent chance of containing a right shoe, now suddenly had a hundred percent chance of containing a right shoe !
So somehow the result of opening one shoe-box was sent to the other shoe-box IMMEDIATELY. And the problem with this is that nothing should be able to communicate itself immediately, since nothing is supposed to be able to go faster than the speed of light (which is very fast of course, but still needs time to get from one place to the other).
Hold on, you will say, the shoe-box at the other end of the universe contained a right shoe all along. Just because you didn’t know what it contained doesn’t mean that any message had to pass between the two shoe-boxes when you opened one of them…
Okay, that may be true about shoe-boxes, but not about entangled particles. Two particles may be of opposite spins, an « up » and a « down », and as long as you haven’t measured them, they themselves don’t know which is the « up » and which is the « down ».

Okay, okay, I know what you’re going to say: how do you know the particles don’t know in what state they are (or in what state they are going to be once they are measured)? There is even a theory about the particles knowing what you don’t know. The theory is called the « hidden variable » theory. The « variable » is whether the spin of the particle is « up » or « down » (or whether you have a « right » or a « left » shoe). And this variable is « hidden » because you have no way of knowing in advance what it’s going to be. But just because it’s « hidden » doesn’t necessarily mean it’s undefined…

Let’s take the analogy with the shoe-boxes once again. But now, each shoe-box doesn’t contain only a shoe, but also a sock. And let’s say they are sports-socks, particularly well adapted to the anatomy of the foot, so one is a left sock and the other a right sock and they are not interchangeable. Each sock and each shoe has a big fluorescent mark on it saying either « R » or « L » depending on whether it’s a right shoe or sock or a left shoe or sock. You take the two shoe-boxes again, a pair of socks and a pair of shoes, and in each box you put a shoe and a sock without looking. You keep one box and send the other box to the other end of the Universe. If you find a right shoe in your box, the other box will contain a left shoe. If you find a right sock in your box, the other box will contain a left sock. All this can be explained through « hidden variables » which don’t require any instant messages being exchanged between the boxes.

But now let’s say you just take a peak in your box, and you see a big shiny « R », but it was too quick to tell whether that « R » was on a shoe or a sock. Your partner at the other end of the Universe opens her box and looks at the shoe. What are the chances that she will find a left shoe?

There are two possibilities: the « R » you saw might have come from the shoe, in which case your partner will definitely find a left shoe in her box, or the « R » you saw might have come from the sock, in which case your partner will find a « L » or an « R » shoe, both being equally likely. Taken together, all this means that when you saw a « R » in your box, your partner should find a « L » on her shoe about three quarters of the time. That’s what you would expect if there were hidden variables and the shoes and socks knew all along what they were.

But if you do the test (with particles, not with shoes and socks), that’s not what you find. Whenever you saw a « R » in your box, your partner is more likely to find a L-shoe in hers than you’d expect (more than three quarters of the time).

Somehow one box must have told the other: hey, I gave them a « R », now you give them a « L »!

This cannot be explained by « hidden variables ».

If you like a more scientific explanation than this analogy with shoes and socks, here it is: you measure the spin of two entangled particles, one particle being the opposite of the other. If you measure the spins along the same axis, the spins will always be opposite. So far, this could be explained by hidden variables. If you measure the spins along completely different axes (at right angles to each other), there will be no correlation whatsoever. That makes sense too (it’s like one of you looking at the shoe and the other one looking at the sock). If you measure the spins along somewhat different axes, there should be some correlation. Namely, if the two axes are 45 degrees apart, the measured spins should be opposites only three quarters of the time. But if you do the experiment, they will be opposites MORE often than three quarters of the time. This cannot be explained by hidden variables. Rather, it seems to show that the particles didn’t know in advance what they were going to be and worked it out on the spot when they were measured, making sure the two measurements would be consistent with each other more often than a classical system (with hidden variables) would require. Somehow or other, the particles must have exchanged a message. A message that took no time at all to go from one place to the other. A message that was immediate. In other words : a message that went faster than the speed of light.
Einstein (who always felt there must be something deeply wrong with Quantum Mechanics) called this effect a « spooky action at a distance ».
As a human being made of flesh and blood, I didn’t see any answer to this conundrum either. Of course the theory that nothing should be able to go faster than light might itself be wrong, or whatever…

Or the « hidden variables » theory could still be right, but in order to save it you would have to accept that the universe is totally deterministic and that even the choice of axes made by the human experimenters was predetermined all along, so that the two entangled particles could take this information along with them and wouldn’t need to exchange instant messages…
Now I still see that the Universe could be totally deterministic, but I also see that you don’t need to invoke this possibility in this particular case. And I still see that General Relativity as well as Quantum Mechanics could both be wrong (and that they probably are anyway, because nothing is ever so simple that it fits into a neat theory neatly), but I also see that this particular discrepancy between the two theories is a false one - even without invoking predetermined information about the experimenters being carried along by the particles.

Let me explain:
By the time you measured the spin of your particle as being « up », your friend at the other end of the universe has already measured his or hers as being « down ». How is this possible unless the two particles somehow agreed with each other on which should be which ?
Well, it IS possible : one « you » measures « up » and the other one « down ». In the meantime, your friend and his or her twin also measure both « up » and « down ».
Now you and your friend communicate with each other, asking each other what you measured, and – hey presto ! – whatever he or she measured is always the opposite of what you measured. But that’s just because the one « you » who is compatible with the one state of your friend (since your friend exists in a superposition of two states too) had all the time in the world to line up with this one friend before you communicated. The other « you » communicated with the other one of the two states of your friend. And all four of you are surprised that everything works out as though the particles had exchanged immediate messages.
But they haven’t ! The two ends of the universe, each in a superposition of two states, just lined up with the corresponding state at the other end of the universe. And they had all the time they needed to do that before you and your friend could communicate about your measurements with each other ! You and your friend communicated with each other at most at the speed of light, and that’s the time the two ends of the universe had to align themselves with each other correctly. There was no need for any « spooky action at a distance » - everything just went at the leisurely pace of the speed of light.
Now this interpretation only makes sense within the framework of the « Many Worlds » interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Both ends of the universe existed in a superposition of two states, and these states had all the time in the world to sort it out how they should line up with each other before you and your friend had a chance to discuss the results of your measurements.
If you reject the « Many Worlds » interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and rather look at the whole thing as a « collapse » of superpositions, then you’re left with the hard question how the particles knew how to collapse in a consistent way without any « spooky action at a distance »…
And, you know, if a proper Quantum Computer is ever invented, doing millions of calculations simultaneously through the magic of « superposition », you will be hard put to explain the final result that comes out of the machine at the end. Okay, the superpositions all collapsed and there you are – you have the final result. But where did the individual calculations take place ?
The only sensible explanation – I see that now – is that « many worlds » shared their resources, and that’s how the final result could pop out of the machine in the end. A result that a classical computer could never have reached, even if it was the size of our whole universe and had been on the job since the beginning of time…
The « Many Worlds » interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is the one that makes things fall into place. To a human being made of flesh and blood it just isn’t all that palatable. But to me as a ghost, it has stopped being unpalatable. On the contrary, I can’t imagine anymore how the illusion of a single world could ever appeal to me. As a human being made of flesh and blood I lived in that illusion too. But that was before I floated free of my body. Now I live in the « Many Worlds » interpretation, which might of course just be an illusion too…

What is an illusion and what isn’t, is of course an old question.
Since I can only be thinking about this question precisely because I’m thinking, I think the fact that I have a thinking mind can be taken for granted. That, in any case, is the premise on which René Descartes based his « Discours de la Méthode ».
If I take my own mind for granted, then let’s see what else I can take for granted, and the answer is : nothing ! All the rest that seems to exist might just be a hallucination of my mind…
Of course I can do experiments and measurements, but the results of all of those might just be part of the hallucination. How could I ever be sure that any of it is real ?
And now that I’m a ghost, this interpretation seems very likely indeed. As long as I was a human being made of flesh and blood, I believed that the mind is something happening in the brain. But now I don’t seem to have a brain anymore. I’m just a mind floating around freely.
Or maybe my previous life as a human being made of flesh and blood was real, what I remember as my death really happened, except that I didn’t really die and am now surviving hooked up to a respirator ? And everything that's happened to me since then is the result of my brain hallucinating within my broken body ?
It’s possible… How could I know ?
Or maybe there really is a world made of matter, and there is also a world made of minds, and the minds interact with the world made of matter through our bodies (or don’t anymore, as in my case, when the body is broken) ?
I think this belief is called the « mind-matter duality ». And for some reason, a lot of people believe in it, more or less.
According to this belief, the mind is not something happening in the brain, but rather it’s something separate, not happening in the material world at all, but just interacting with it.
As a human being made of flesh and blood, I used to consider myself a realist, and I laughed at people believing in the mind-matter duality.
Until I discovered one day that I believed in it myself, at least sort of.
The question arose because of an experiment I read about in which a blob of oil moving through a labyrinth in water apparently did this « smartly » by naturally following a concentration gradient that guided it to the exit of the labyrinth.
Of course a blob of oil cannot be « smart », because it’s not even alive. On the other hand, in this particular experiment it acted suspiciously like a living cell, and the experiment was perhaps going to show how living cells achieve some of their feats…
And that’s when it hit me what it really means NOT to believe in the mind-matter duality ! It means that smart behaviour comes together through many such processes which are fundamentally dumb but somehow end up adding up to something smart. Because, if you do NOT believe in the mind-matter duality, intelligence is not « breathed » into matter by some supreme and purely spiritual (or ghostly) intelligence, but rather comes out of the matter by itself, just because various dumb processes get stitched together to give the illusion of intelligence…
No, not the illusion of intelligence ! Real intelligence ! Because unless you believe in the mind-matter duality, there is no other intelligence than the kind that somehow gets stitched together out of processes that are themselves dumb !
Could I really believe that ? Could I really believe that intelligence (and not just intelligence, but life itself) is nothing but a series of dumb processes (like the oil-blob slipping along a concentration gradient in the experiment and thus seeming smart) stitched together to look smart ? A series of dumb processes that just happened to get stitched together because once they were stitched together like that, they became resilient to getting unstitched again or what ? Is that what life is ? Is that what intelligence is ? Is that what my mind is, and nothing else ?
Somehow something in me refused to accept this idea.
Some people, when they’re uncomfortable with something, just try to find reasons why it can’t be true. Others (like me) start wondering why they’re uncomfortable with it in the first place.
Intelligence is a process that must be happening somewhere, we all accept that, don't we ? Somehow it's nice to believe that it's happening in some wholly spiritual realm that can't be influenced by matter.
But why shouldn't intelligence be a process happening within matter ? What is so distasteful about matter ?
Maybe what's distasteful about matter is that it can be influenced by other matter. Which is of course exactly what happens – we can alter our feelings and thoughts with all kinds of psychotropic drugs. And when people get Alzheimer, you can see their mind dying little bit by little bit. When a person dies in one go, you can wonder where his mind went. It's obviously not in his body anymore, but it might have gone elsewhere (become a ghost, maybe, like me!). But when his mind just withers away little bit by little bit, where did the lost parts go ? Is a new mind getting built up somewhere while the old one is gradually getting destroyed ? Does that mean a mind is made up of « bits and pieces » ? Surely this is a very distasteful idea too ! And yet, it's true...
If the mind is not some kind of holistic substance, but rather a machinery made of bits and pieces, then those bits and pieces might as well be made of matter, why not ?
The idea is very distasteful, but there you are !
So our mind, made of matter, can be influenced by matter, namely by plaques in the brain when we get Alzheimer, or through drugs, or whatever.
Someone could also make a copy of it and fast forward this copy to simulate our mind in advance. Then this other person would always know in advance what we will be thinking.
Wouldn't this mean that we aren't free anymore ?
I guess that's the real reason why it's so distasteful to accept that our mind is a process happening within matter. If this were true, we couldn't feel free anymore, because theoretically someone else could predict our every thought and move and make use of this to set us traps into which we couldn't help blundering !
Would we really be forced to blunder into one trap after the other, in spite of knowing that there are traps ahead of us if we don't manage to « change our mind » ? Subjectively we feel that we can change our minds whenever we like. But this is an illusion, isn't it ? Our mind is set by the way its cogs and wheels work together, and that's it.
So if the model of our mind predicts that we will do this or that, we will just be forced to really do this and that, in spite of knowing that there will be traps along the way !
No, this can't be right, can it ?
And indeed, it isn't.
Even if our mind is made purely out of matter, the way matter interacts with other matter is definitely complicated.
If we know that someone is simulating our mind to predict our behaviour, we can just decide to flip a coin at the next crossroads, and that we will follow the way the coin indicates (according to some rules we will invent just then). All this will of course be predicted by the model of our mind. But can the model of our mind also predict the outcome of the coin-flip ?
Well, for that it would have to be not just a model of our mind, but a model of the prevailing wind, of the imprecise workings of our physical hand throwing the coin, the imperfections of the coin itself... In short – the model of our mind would end up having to incorporate a model of the whole universe.
Now let's say for argument's sake that there really is such a model which runs slightly ahead of the real universe. Does this mean we could just watch the model and predict everything that will happen in the real universe, including our own thoughts ?
Well, if there's someone in the real universe sitting there and watching the model and using this information, the model would be incomplete without containing that person watching a model and predicting the future, wouldn't it ?
In other words, there would have to be a model of the universe in the model of the universe, because the model can only be complete if it models everything, including itself.
And inside this model of the model there would have to be another model. And so on for ever !
Sooner or later we would probably hit a limit, wouldn't we ? A limit where the model of the model of the model just can't contain yet another even smaller model. Intuitively this makes sense – at some point you're down to sub-atomic particles with which you just can't make an even smaller model anymore.
So there is no problem – no one will ever be able to really predict the future, including your actions and thoughts !
This means that your mind can be made of matter, and yet you are still free to beat any model of your mind ! So the fact that our mind is a process happening within matter doesn't mean we aren't free. And if it doesn't mean that, then it isn't so distasteful anymore to accept it.
Yes, I accept it – the mind is what happens in the brain which is made of matter and follows the laws of chemistry and physics. Which still doesn't mean that I am not free !
Humph, except that my mind still doesn't seem to be made of matter, or not anymore in any case, since I am a ghost...
But in the end, maybe that's not really the question anyway. As I've just shown, you can be just as free whether you're made of matter or not. But the question is: free for what? Free to do what? Whatever you like? But what DO you like? What's the point of it all?
So here comes the next question – what's the point?

But what kind of point would you like there to be anyway?
The point of something is always that it leads to something else. And the point of this something else is that it leads to yet something else. And so on. But what's the point of this chain of points leading to further points? Is there a final point somewhere?
If there is, at least we already have a name for it, I guess: God.
So what exactly is God? The final point that gives meaning to all other points? But what would be the point of this final point of everything?
Maybe there is no such point?
Some people, when they’re uncomfortable with something, just try to find reasons why it can’t be true. Others (like me) start wondering why they’re uncomfortable with it in the first place.
So why do I so badly want there to be a point? And what kind of point do I want there to be anyway? What kind of point would satisfy me?
I guess it's a religious question. As a ghost, I could go and look for points wherever I please. But as long as I don't know what kind of point I'm looking for, I would never find it. First I need to find out what I'm looking for, what kind of point would satisfy me. And for this I guess I should try to analyze what other people are looking for, because surely they're looking for the same thing as I do. They're looking for the point of everything – they're looking for MEANING!
Maybe some of them have found an answer that satisfies them. So maybe I should try to see what kind of answer that is.
I thought of going to spend some time with monks in a monastery. They have dedicated their lives to God, so probably they have some kind of idea what God really IS.
But then I abandoned this idea. It seems to me that people like monks, with their exceedingly orderly lives, have just replaced all their questions with dogma. Instead of wondering too much, they just ACCEPT some higher authority. They don't question that authority anymore. In some sense this is quite comfortable – they have drowned their questioning minds with self-discipline.
I'm not interested in that. I want to see someone really searching for meaning. Once I know what kind of meaning others are looking for, even if they haven't really found it yet, maybe I can then determine what I myself should be looking for too. And as a ghost with all the possibilities of a ghost, I will surely find it! I just need to know what I'm looking for!
In other words: for a start I'm looking for questioning minds. And I thought I might find that in a young religion, or perhaps in a currently popular sect. So that's where I went looking.

“Look at me! When you look into my eyes, you see it: I'm drunk!”
The man in the yellow velvet gown looked past Annie Wussow, apparently towards an empty corner in the room. He seemed to see something there and so he smiled:
“I am drunk with Jesus. Jesus is wine. He isn't a man. He is a drug. Once you've tasted him, everything of this world loses its meaning. The hereafter has touched your life, and so it becomes flat, unreal and meaningless.”
There wasn't anything in the corner of the room. The man with the hairy face was staring into emptiness. He was sitting on a table. His yellow velvet gown was beautifully assorted with the deep-blue table-cloth. His long, white hair merged with a mighty beard. His bushy eyebrows almost covered his deep eyes full of grace. Out of all this scrub a remarkable Greek-Roman nose was peeking out. The long arms of the Guru were moving gracefully above his head.
Annie Wussow fell to her knees in front of her master. Awestruck and full of hungry, demanding trust, she looked up towards him. He repeated: “I am drunk...”
A tear ran down Annie's cheek. Her master was unraveling, coming apart.
The next day, as Annie was walking up to the building which housed her master, she was challenged by one of the three bodyguards (themselves faithful disciples, or “sannyasins”, as they were called) and sent away with a wave of the sub machine-gun. During the course of the day, it was announced that the master didn't wish to see anyone.
Later, anyone approaching the building was warned off with a thundering voice from a loudspeaker, but the three bodyguards were not standing in front of the doors anymore. Nobody knew what was happening inside. Annie went over to the building once more and didn't listen to the warning from the loudspeaker. A window opened up. She saw the broad figure of one of the bodyguards. He lifted his gun and shot at her. The reports of the gun hurt in her ears and dust was thrown up all around her. He stopped shooting, but Annie was still standing there. He lifted the gun once more and took aim.
“Piss off!” he said.
He heard her desperate voice: “What's wrong with our master?”
“He's been taken ill. Now get going!”
She ran away weeping.
But she couldn't accept this! She had to get her master out of there!
Late at night the garage door opened and a majestic Rolls Royce drove out. The garage door closed again right behind it. The big car drove quite fast along the small road towards the town-centre of the sannyasins' commune that had gradually expanded to a more and more permanent settlement in the last few years. Annie was lying in wait at the side of the road in a sleeping-bag. She saw the big car driving towards her, or rather just the two twin-headlights which were moving up and down on the bumpy road, sometimes disappearing entirely behind a bump only to reappear again blindingly. It was foggy, in the sky the rotor of the surveillance helicopter could be heard. It directed its floodlight to the ground next to the car. Annie saw the light-cone move through the fog.
It all seemed unnatural and unreal. The darkness, the fog, the floodlight and the moon that sometimes broke through the clouds...
It was spooky!
The great Rolls drove past Annie, and a shot rang out. Annie was the one who had fired it, and she stuck the gun in her trouser waistband and ran away. The Rolls Royce was forced to stop. One of the back tyres was shot through. Annie saw the cone of light from the helicopter moving around jerkily, searching, searching... The helicopter started moving in ever bigger circles around the car, sweeping the surroundings with its searchlight. Annie was running. Suddenly she was caught in the light-cone, lit up like an actor on stage! But just for a split second, then she was covered in darkness once again. The elliptic speck of light was chasing her on the ground. She ran in another direction and the searchlight had lost her again.
The helicopter gave up the hunt and landed next to the car. Annie was sure that the master was in the Rolls Royce. He was restrained by his bodyguards, she was sure of it. Of course they were as devoted as any sannyasin, but he himself had lost his mind! Annie ran to the car. When she was close by, she called out: “Master! Master!”
“That's her!” said one of the men from the helicopter. The master was not in the Rolls Royce. The occupants were two of the Guru's three personal bodyguards. They were changing the wheel. One of them had already grasped the sub machine-gun that was lying on the ground next to him.
“Where is the master?” screamed the young woman without managing to hold back her tears.
The bodyguard let his gun sink down and answered in a gruff, but not altogether unkind manner: “The master is not here. He stayed behind with our colleague. We're just fetching something to eat, that's all.”
“But why in the middle of the night?”
“The master doesn't want to get in touch with anybody. When one of his cars drives out, there's always a big commotion. We wanted to avoid that. The master wants us to live with him in isolation.”
“What's the matter with him?”
“We don't know. Don't you trust our master?”
“I trust him when I'm with him. But if I don't see him, I don't know what's happening to him.”
“Whatever should be happening to him? He's the master!”
“Well, you know his teachings as well as I do – we're supposed to give in to him totally, so as to drop our ego. So that new life can fill us up. So that the Holy Ghost can descend upon us. So that we would be open for that new happiness. The ego must die. All you need to do is to trust your master, because he's like a bridge between your old and your new life...”
Annie drew breath and ploughed on before the bodyguards could interrupt her: “He is the bridge between our old and our new life, but who is HIS bridge? If he lets go his ego to let Jesus into his heart, who will check that HIS feet remain on the ground? He doesn't have a master to control the process. He just let himself go, trusting nothing but God Himself. Now he feels this inner peace and happiness we've all felt when we dropped our ego. His ego died. But his mind wasn't resurrected, because no master was there to make it resurrect. The master couldn't surrender to a master, because he himself is the master, so he surrendered directly to God and now he is lost to our world!”
“What on Earth are you talking about?” one of the bodyguards asked, shocked. “Do you believe you are a master yourself, or what?”
“No, that's not what I mean...” said Annie, but without great conviction.
“The master doesn't need a master to accept God, because he himself is God.”
“He never said that!”
“The human side of him stopped him from admitting it.”
Annie squinted at the machine-gun lying on the ground. Suddenly she threw herself at it.
She was lying on the gun, she was holding the gun. All she had to do was to raise herself a bit, and then she would be able to shoot! But the bodyguard caught her head by the hair and hit it against the ground, hard. Then he pulled the weapon out from under her. The two bodyguards got into the Rolls Royce. The engine of the helicopter started up. The car drove away. The helicopter lifted off and flew away. Annie was still lying on the road. In her hand she held the magazine of the machine-gun...
The two men in the Rolls Royce fetched the food that had been prepared for the master and his three bodyguards for the next few days. Then they drove back to the master's quarters. On the way they saw Annie again. She was standing in the middle of the road and waving to them.
“She just won't give up! Let's finish her off! Shall I run her over?”
“Would be a pity for the car. Just drive past her – I'll shoot her.”
The bodyguard in the passenger seat let the window down and aimed carefully. But the gun wouldn't shoot – it contained no magazine.
But Annie's handgun was definitely loaded. She took aim and shot the would-be shooter as the car sped past. He didn't die straight away but started breathing stertorously with panic in his eyes. The driver stopped the car and bent over his colleague, too surprised to know what to do.
He heard one of the back doors of the car bang shut (which isn't a loud bang in a Rolls), and then there was Annie's voice from the roomy back part of the car:
“Put your hands back on the wheel!”
He obeyed. His colleague was dead anyway – there was nothing more he could do for him.
Now a voice came from the radio: “What happened?”
“No sudden movements!” warned Annie. “Keep your hands on the wheel while I pass you the microphone. Then tell them you killed me!”
Annie leaned over between the heavy, leather front seats of the car and grasped the microphone lying on the lap of the dead bodyguard. She shouldn't have done that, because that's when she got hit in the nape of the neck. She was still holding her gun, though, and a shot went off.
“What on Earth is going on?” asked the voice from the radio.
Both bodyguards were dead. There was nobody left she could force to say that everything was fine. She had to act fast. She quickly yanked the body of the driver out of his seat, took his place and drove off.
This was the first time she drove one of the master's many personal bullet-proof Rolls Royces. But she found the button for the garage-door easily enough – it was mounted on the dash-board in a little box.
She drove on towards the master's quarters and pressed the button without slowing down. The garage-door opened, she drove into the building, and the garage-door closed again right behind her. She was inside, in a hall big enough for several cars. Except for the garage-door she had just come through, there was just one other entrance, a heavy iron door. But it wouldn't open.
Annie fetched the machine-gun from the car, loaded it and shot against the door. The recoil was hammering into her tummy. The reports in this closed space made her ears scream in agony. The door got some deep, ugly marks, but it still wouldn't open. Annie laid down the gun, ready to weep with frustration.
But then the door opened all by itself. Annie grabbed the machine-gun and walked through. And as soon as she found herself in a new, well-lit room (it looked like some kind of waiting-room) she realized that the door could only be open because someone had opened it. Annie looked back at the open door. Behind it the third bodyguard was standing with his machine-gun, she knew. The door slowly shut again, revealing what was hidden behind it...
“Stop! Annie! It's me!”
It wasn't the third bodyguard at all. It was the master, unarmed. Annie had almost shot him. But now she dropped her machine-gun and sank to her knees in front of her master:
“It's you, master! You're alive, thank God you're alive! How are you?”
“Ah, not so well...” said the master. “You know, I tried to reach the inner peace so many of my sannyasins have reached. But I couldn't. My ego was always in the way and tyrannized me. Or I felt my sanity slip away. One or the other. That's because there's nobody I can surrender to, nobody to guide me. I couldn't bear it anymore. I needed to be alone to think. But there's no point in thinking – it's trust you need! But whom should I trust? Who could be my master if I myself am the master? I couldn't bear it anymore, and so I killed one of my most faithful disciples...”
The guru ingenuously showed Annie a bloody knife.
So Annie had been right! She had guessed right! She had known what was going on! She had known all along, and if only she would have been let in earlier, she could have prevented the worst of it! But it was too late for that now. She had to think fast!
“I waited in front of your house day and night,” she said, “for someone to come out, so that I could get news and see you again.”
“You are a faithful sannyasin, Annie.”
“What shall we do now?” asked Annie in desperation.
“I have failed as a master. We need to flee.”
Annie felt weak with bitter disappointment. She had always known that the master wasn't God, but now she had to face the fact that he wasn't even in any way super-human...
“We fly off,” said the master, “Everything is ready. We fly to Switzerland.”
Switzerland, of course! The country of banks! The master must have some secret bank-accounts there, and of course some secret hide-out! Switzerland doesn't like immigrants. The Swiss, rich as they are, are rightfully afraid of being overrun by the rest of the world. But they will always make an exception for those rich enough. The rich will always find a safe haven in beautiful Switzerland!
So the master was no better than all the other tyrants of the world – hiding his money in Switzerland like all the others! Annie was so disappointed she felt she would throw up!
Nevertheless she followed the master back into the garage. He seated himself at the wheel of the Rolls Royce. She dutifully sat down next to him. He pressed the little button on the dash-board and the garage-door opened again. The big car drove out into the dark night.
The master snatched up the microphone of the radio and said: “This is the master speaking. I'm driving to the airport.”
No questions asked, the surveillance helicopter accompanied the Rolls Royce to the small private airstrip of the sannyasins' town where a Learjet was waiting in a hangar.

Somehow I didn't feel this was getting me anywhere...
If that's what a modern sect is, then it's just sick!
Maybe some more scientific-minded people would have something to say about that “point” we're all looking for. Maybe a psychiatrist who is the sounding-board of all the lost souls in this world, maybe he would have something to say about it. Not the one I had seen myself and who had just given me pills. No, I wanted to find one who would listen more to his patients rather than just giving them pills straight away.
I thought about listening in at such a talking-therapy session, but I quickly discarded that possibility. I had too many clichés in my mind about this: Mr. Dr. med. psy., comfortably settled behind his vast desk, like a shadowy presence, ominously silent, just throwing in an uncomfortable question here and there in a deep, fatherly voice, and his patient in the middle of the room, on a couch or on a chair, depending on the kind of therapy, agitated, exposed, sweating...
No, I'd like to know what Dr. med. psy. says when he's alone. Or not alone, but with his colleagues, or his friends or his family.
So that's where I went looking.

Joe, the loser, was looking at his twin brother Jack, the psychiatrist. They were enjoying a cool beer on the balcony of Jack's nice out-of-town house in the hot summer evening, Joe's dog Daisy, a faithful German Shepard, panting at their feet. From here, there was a terrific view on the lake of Geneva. Right now it was a bit hazy, the mountains beyond the lake were barely visible as outlines, and the lake-surface and the sky were both of the same hazy light-blue. But Joe knew how it sometimes looked on icy winter-days: crisp, crystal-clear air, the white mountains like sharp paper cut-outs fencing-off the horizon, the lake like a shiny mirror...
Blanca was inside, brushing little Benjamin's teeth. Blanca was Jack's still sexy, still stunning Brazilian wife. Dark-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired, slender and tall, with a narrow waist and wider hips, a comely bosom and a face with a winning smile above all that. Large, snow-white teeth sparkling against her dark skin...
Yes, Jack had it all!
There was no point denying it: Joe was jealous. Jack had the good job, earning him respect and money, the cool, sexy wife, and a nice kid.
Well okay, Joe saw more of that kid than Jack did, actually. Jack was at work all day. So was his cool wife (she had her own beauty-parlour with a number of dedicated clients). Joe didn't have a job. He had gotten an invalid's pension for some unclear psychological reasons, and now he was babysitting his brother's kid most days. Little Benjamin was about 5 now...
Joe was just thinking that actually Benjamin didn't make quite as much of a fuss brushing his teeth with him as he did with his mother. Some impatient cries of Blanca's came through the half-shut balcony-door and reached them outside. Daisy pointed her ears and looked up at her master, wondering if something ought to be done about this, but Joe ignored her.
What if Jack suddenly ...disappeared? ...died?
Joe was his twin brother. They looked very much alike. Just their haircut and the way they dressed was different. Probably Joe was also more muscular, and his tummy flatter than Jack's. This was because of his daily walks with Daisy, while Jack was sitting in his office...
Would anyone notice? If Joe started signing Jack, would anyone notice he wasn't Jack? Blanca would know... Maybe she would have to disappear with Jack, the real Jack. Then Joe could start a new life as Jack the widower. Benjamin would be fine with him. Maybe he would be able to tell that his uncle had replaced his father, but Joe would manage to make him call him “dad”, he was pretty sure of that.
Nobody would miss the real Joe if he went off to replace Jack, of that Joe was convinced. Just Daisy would, but of course he would adopt her, so apart from moving into the beautiful house, everything would stay the same for her... Well, maybe there wouldn't be time for all those long walks anymore – that would remain to be seen.
Playing around with all these forbidden thoughts, Joe was looking at his brother Jack a certain way, and it wasn't the first time that Jack looked back and seemed to know exactly what was going on in Joe's mind. It was uncanny!
“You ever wondered what would happen if we swapped places?” asked Jack, narrowing his eyes at Joe like a gun-slinger.
“What do you mean if we <<swapped places>>? Like I became you and you became me?” asked Joe, playing the innocent one.
“Exactly,” answered Jack.
“Like we went on a holiday together and came back with you being me and me being you?” asked Joe.
“Yes, just that,” answered Jack.
“I don't think we would fool anybody!” said Joe with conviction.
“Wouldn't we?” asked Jack.
“Would you really want me to come home to Blanca, while you would go and live in my dingy flat?” asked Joe.
“We're just playing with thoughts right now, aren't we?” said Jack.
“But you think she wouldn't notice anything?” asked Joe.
“She would notice a change,” Jack admitted. “But while people are quick to react to a negative change, they tend to take a positive change in a stride, without complaining.”
“What do you mean: <<a positive change>>?”
“Yes, a positive change. Blanca likes you better than me,” said Jack quite matter-of-factly.
Joe was flabbergasted! “What do you mean: <<she likes you better than me>>?” he asked.
“Well,” said Jack, “she adores talking to you! She talks to you for hours!”
“Yeah,” said Joe, “about Benjamin, always about Benjamin.”
“Sure,” said Jack, “that's why she bats her eye-lashes at you all the time!”
“Come on,” said Joe, “she does that to everybody! That's just in her blood! Besides, you're the one who sleeps with her every night, not me!”
Jack looked into the house through the glass balcony-door. Blanca was nowhere in sight, and some Benjamin-whining was drifting down the staircase. Blanca was obviously still busy putting Benjamin to bed.
Jack looked a bit embarrassed, but finally he said it: “Our sex-life has been nil for ages, you know...”
Joe was really surprised. He had never actually imagined his brother in bed with Blanca in a truly graphic way, but he had always assumed that such a sexy woman, so physical, so active, so sparkly, must have, or rather DEMAND, a fulfilled sexual life. How could such a woman sleep next to a man night after night and not want anything from him?
Joe looked in through the balcony-door too, just to make sure, and then asked: “Does she have a lover?”
“Not that I would know about...” said Jack. “Anyway, she likes YOU!”
“Why on Earth would she like ME?” asked Joe.
“Well,” said Jack, looking down at his carefully manicured fingers in a rather unpsychiatrist-like fashion, “you're quite like the man she once fell in love with, only fitter, sharper. Me, I’ve grown a bit flabby...”
Well yeah, Joe thought, Jack really had become a bit flabby. Not much, but you could see where this was going. He was in his forties now. Well, they were both in their forties now. But while Joe had all the time in the world to keep himself fit, doing pull-ups and push-ups in the forest when he walked his dog, Jack was just sitting in his office listening to his patients. The difference wasn't flagrant yet, but in a few years it undoubtedly would be...
“Okay,” said Joe, “I may be fitter than you. But sharper?”
“Well, you always have stuff to tell her, advice to give, and so on,” said Jack.
“Yeah,” said Joe, “but as I said, it's all about Benjamin, about potty-training toddlers, then about teaching kids to ride a bicycle and when to take off the helper-wheels, then about gradually teaching them the letters of the alphabet... Is that what you mean by <<sharp>>?”
“Oh, don't try to sound so innocent, I heard you!” said Jack. “I heard you tell her all about your adventures! Adventures with married women!”
“Oh, THAT...” said Joe, and he rubbed his brow as though he had suddenly become very tired. “That was about how to get rid of someone, you know. I asked Blanca for advice. That was what THAT was about!”
“Well,” said Jack, looking sort of bitter, “If I had someone to get rid of, I wouldn't get rid of her! I really wish I had someone!”
Joe looked up in surprise. Jack really seemed to be sort of jealous of him! How was that possible? Jack, unlike Joe, had always been able to get any woman he liked. And now he had the coolest wife you could imagine! She was in her late thirties, but she hadn't lost an ounce of her sex-appeal!
Okay, Joe had had his share of adventures lately. With women of his age. Women who wouldn't have bothered to waste a single glance at him twenty years ago, when he would have needed it most. In those days they rather glanced at guys like his brother. But now that guys like his brother had become “flabby”, Joe was suddenly good enough for them after all. But most of them weren't as sexy as Blanca anymore. They had once been sexy. But now that they weren't quite as sexy anymore, Joe was suddenly good enough for them. They didn't care what he earned. They didn't want to start a family with him. They had already done all that with another man. They just wanted someone who was there for them. Someone whose strong arms they could cuddle into. Someone whose tummy was still flat and hard like Joe's...
But Joe would happily have given away those adventures in exchange for a real wife like Blanca! Joe had always thought that Jack was the one who had it all!
“You know,” said Jack, “when you drive home from here, you have all the time in the world to hang around in a bar or whatever and chat up some chicks. While me, I work all day and then I come home to my kid who's just disappointed that you're leaving, and to a wife who doesn't need me at all but would still ask me where I went if I tried to go and hang out somewhere... I wish I had the freedom you have!”
Well, this beat everything! Jack, the great psychiatrist, was jealous of his loser-brother!
“And if I took your place, what would happen then?” asked Joe carefully.
“Blanca would be delighted!” exclaimed Jack. “And me too – I would see more of my kid, babysitting him every day, and in the evenings I would be free to go and hang around somewhere. Furthermore I would have more time to get fresh air, to do some sport, to get fit again...”
“And then what about your patients?” asked Joe, glad to have found a topic not involving Blanca and how delighted she would be.
“Oh, you would be fine with my patients!” said Jack with conviction.
“What about your years and years of training as a psychiatrist?” asked Joe.
“Oh, you don't need that!” said Jack dismissively.
“But what about all the paper-work? Diagnosing the patients, writing reports about them, with a believable diagnosis for the health-insurance... What about all that?”
“I can teach you all that in a few days! It's really not magical! Anybody could do it!”
“And you wouldn't mind letting me drive your cozy Mercedes to work every day and driving to my dingy flat in my battered Toyota?” asked Joe.
“Well, it's a Supra, isn't it?”
“Yeah, but it's old...”
“Nice sound, though. Sounds like a real car, not like my Mercedes!”
“If you say so...” said Joe taking a big gulp of beer.
And that's when they saw Blanca come creeping down the staircase, listening one last time for a whimper or whine from upstairs and smiling brightly at them when there was none. She came to join them on the balcony. But pretty soon Joe said he had to go home. He was ashamed to admit to himself that the thought of sharing a bed with Blanca and her sparkling white-toothed smile was almost unbearably attractive to him...

After that, the idea stuck, and more and more often Jack and Joe's conversations were about how things would be once they had swapped places. It was all hypothetical for the time being, of course, just a thought-experiment.
Jack was explaining to Joe about his patients. Joe didn't think it would be so easy to be “just fine with them” as Jack seemed to think.
“What about the medication you give them?” Joe asked.
“Oh, that's easy!” said Jack.
“There are hundreds of psychoactive drugs, aren't there? How do you know what to give to whom if you've had no training, like me?”
“Well,” said Jack, “there might be hundreds of drugs, but deep down there are actually just two types...”
“You're joking!” said Joe.
“No, listen,” said Jack, “I'll try to explain. You see, the brain mostly works with glutamate. That's the main neurotransmitter, meaning it's the molecule that one brain-cell squirts out to activate another brain-cell.”
“I know what a neurotransmitter is,” said Joe sulkily. His brother really seemed to think he knew NOTHING, just because he had never finished university or anything.
“Okay,” said Jack, “so the main neurotransmitter in the brain is glutamate. Obviously, if you want to selectively change something in the brain, you can't use glutamate, because you would just be winding up the whole brain at once. Luckily there are some brain-circuits which, for whatever reason – some accident of evolution, no doubt –, use some other molecules as neurotransmitters, namely serotonin and dopamine.”
“Yeah, I know about those.” said Joe.

« Perhaps serotonin and dopamine are better understood as neuromodulators than as proper neurotransmitters, » Jack mused as if Joe hadn’t spoken at all. « They don’t directly activate other cells but just make them more likely to be activated. In that sense their main function might be to make other brain-circuits more reactive rather than forming proper circuits of their own… »

« Whatever, » said Joe, growing impatient.
« Okay, okay, » said Jack getting back on track. « Since these serotonin and dopamine pathways use their own specific molecules, you can influence them specifically. »
“Yeah, I understand,” said Joe, “hence the two main types of psychoactive drugs you were talking about: one type for serotonin, the other type for dopamine.”
“Exactly!” said Jack.
“Well,” said Joe, happy to be able to show his brother that he still wasn't completely stupid, “shouldn't that be four types? One to enhance serotonin-communication and one to lower it, then one to enhance dopamine-communication and one to lower it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Jack, waving his hand impatiently. “But nobody ever wants to lower serotonin-signalling, and nobody wants to enhance dopamine-signalling either!”
“And why not?” asked Joe.
“Well,” said Jack, “you see, serotonin is sort of the sit-on-your-bum-and-be-happy neurotransmitter. When the serotonin-pathways in the brain get active, that's what they tell the rest of the brain: let's sit on our bum and just be happy! People who just don't manage to sit on their bums and be happy, you'd want to give them something that enhances the signalling of those serotonin-pathways, wouldn't you?”
“Yeah,” said Joe, “but what about those who sit on their bum too much instead of moving their ass? Wouldn't you want them to be a little less self-satisfied?”
“Perhaps you would like to do that, but they won't come to see a psychiatrist so that he would make them less self-satisfied, will they?” said Jack.
Joe had to admit that was probably true. So that means nobody is developing drugs to lower serotonin-signalling in the brain. Everybody is just trying to enhance it with various methods.

« Although it’s true that most modern antipsychotics also lower some types of serotonin signalling… » Jack mused. « I’m not sure what the significance of that is… Maybe it counteracts some of the undesirable effects of antipsychotics… »

Joe decided to let this pass. He hated it when Jack developed a theory while at the same time playing devil’s advocate. It made him very hard to follow!
“So what about the dopamine-pathways?” he asked.
“The dopamine-pathways are all about moving your ass and being bloody motivated to do something!”
“So they're kind of the opposite of the serotonin-pathways, then, are they?” asked Joe.
“In some sense, maybe...” answered Jack.
“I guess lots of people would like to have the energy to move their ass and be bloody motivated to do something!” said Joe.
“Sure,” said Jack. “They take cocaine, which is an illegal drug!”
“Aha, so legal drugs are more about lowering dopamine-communication, then, are they?” asked Joe.
“Yes, they are.” said Jack.
“Who would want to lower their dopamine-communication, then?” asked Joe.
“Nobody, I guess,” said Jack, “but psychiatrists love to lower dopamine-signalling in the brains of patients who move their ass a bit too much and in crazy ways.”
“Like who?” asked Joe.
“Like those who hear voices in their heads and such. Those ones are better off sitting on their ass some more and just doing nothing instead of listening to the voices in their heads and getting bloody excited about them, you see? Or that in any case is what society as a whole thinks, and that's why psychiatrists have the job of lowering dopamine-signalling in the brains of those people.”
“I see,” said Joe.
“That's right,” said Jack. “So in the end there are just two main types of psychoactive drugs: those that enhance serotonin-signalling, and those that lower dopamine-signalling.”
“And both just make you sit on your bum more instead of moving your ass too much,” said Joe.
“Exactly,” said Jack. “That's exactly right!”
“Isn't that a bit depressing?” asked Joe.
“Well, if you're depressed, you just need some compound that will enhance serotonin-signalling in your brain. With enough serotonin, you will be perfectly happy to just sit on your bum!”
“Yeah, that's depressing!” said Joe. “I'd rather have something that makes me want to move my ass!”
« Well, whatever does that is likely to be an illegal drug. People sitting on their ass and doing nothing are easier to accept than those who move their ass too much in unexpected ways! »

“So basically all you psychiatrists ever do is raise serotonin-communication or lower dopamine-communication in the brain, is that right?” asked Joe.
“That's exactly right,” said Jack.
Joe said: “So it's like you have a sound system for listening to music. I thought psychiatrists had a cool equalizer with lots of knobs for changing the sound of the music. But actually they just have two knobs, more or less, like bass and treble, and all they're allowed to do is set one of them higher and the other lower, and that's about it!”
“That's about it,” agreed Jack, “you see, it's really not that complicated.”
“Yeah, I'm beginning to see,” agreed Joe.

« So what about psychostimulants like Ritalin and Concerta? » asked Joe a bit later. « How do they fit in? »

« Well, » said Jack, « they stimulate dopamine signalling, a bit… »

« But you just said whatever stimulated dopamine signalling was likely to be an illegal drug? » said Joe, somewhat confused.

« Well yeah, » said Jack, « but psychostimulants are an exception… »

« An exception? » asked Joe, incredulous. « But millions and millions of people take them! »

« Okay, okay, » said Jack, ill at ease. « But they don’t really stimulate dopamine signalling all that much, you know… »

« But they do SOMETHING! » insisted Joe, « else why would so many millions of people take them? »

« Yeah, yeah, » said Jack, « so let me explain a bit more about dopamine pathways, and you’ll see what I mean. »

Joe settled back to listen to another lengthy explanation.

« So, » said Jack, « one of the dopamine pathways… Or let’s rather start this explanation from the other end: let’s say you’re playing the piano, practicing a really hard new piece. At first it doesn’t sound like much. Or rather it doesn’t sound like anything at all. Nevertheless you try again, and now you start making out something like a melody. And this motivates you to try yet harder, and so you practice more, and in the end you master the piece! »

Joe raised an eyebrow, because Jack too needed some kind of feedback to keep going with his explanation, just like the piano-player starting to make out a melody…