I dream of a world sans natural law. Natives say it runs on expectations. But how? And why? Mr. Spock is here, concocting formulae to model it. But math just blocks my way. They say "It's simple: what you picture happens. Not mystical! A mundane fact. Free thought's a hazard--discipline or die! Rein that Earth imagination. Let it act wild here with idle fears, and they will come to prove you a fool in our continuum." And I'm one. I fail to calm my inner eye. I'm one. They come. They kidnap us and put us on a bus. Careen down canyon-walls. Steep switchbacks. We victims try to picture bus-parts cracking off, to cause a crash, escape. But I fear we'll run right off a cliff! Still witch the wheels, and then an axle grinding loose to clang, dance, fall, but bus steers on! Impossible. Lean out, find all along beneath the chassis, a horde of small beasts a-gallop under our hijack have been bearing us furback! Teemwork carries tons! As if we're heroes on a cheering fan-mob borne, quantum volunteers uphold us, all unknown. Here, matter doesn't matter. Awareness alone sustains us. But no seeing-eye god. Well, not one. Buddhahood of lemmings, raccoons. Of squirrels! And not just one bus; they carry all the worlds.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• What you imagine happens: the dream itself exemplifies its thesis. Just before sleep, I asked my dream "Do my expectations shape what manifests? If so, how?" This technique, dream incubation, can take a few nights; but I often get prompt answers--as with this dream.
• Critters carry the runaway bus: I think the dream says that entities (inside us or not) that Jung called "unconscious" aren't blind forces at all, just aware of stuff we don't see; they coordinate even when we think it's all out of control.
• Matter doesn't matter; awareness alone sustains all: Bishop Berkeley claimed the world's a dream and only God's oversight makes stuff persist. My dream argues (I think) you needn't believe in God OR natural law; small observers can sustain the world. And to deny all nonhumans observership is a drastic, unjustified, anthropocentric act. Schroedinger's cat, both dead and alive in its box, is a quantum zombie only to Schroedinger outside. The cat has inside knowledge! Zombiehood exists only if cats can't see, can't feel, can't know. And how far does it go; to whom do you deny awareness? Cats, rats, gnats, quarks? (Jews, gypsies, reds, queers? Pop them in the box, gas them, then claim "No one saw, no one knew." Schroedinger's callous thought-experiment materialized in the Holocaust. What you picture happens.)
• ACTION: Mind what you picture! You really may summon hopes or fears. Even if not, don't assume that means the world is indifferent clockwork. Other critters' ideas may shape things! The seats you see are not the whole bus.

Since this dream's plot didn't resolve, I never wrote it up for the World Dream Bank; but the image haunted me. So did the dream's argument that reality's not Newton's clock or Buddha's dream, but a cooperative creation. Late in January 2015, I tried casting it as a poem, not a story.

After four days of polishing my account of wishing an axle'd break under me... it did. Three days with no wheels. Garages. Bills.

So don't tell me wishin' don't make it so.

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