They are just metaphores:

Matter is energy tied in a knot. There are 92 kinds of knots, each with some variations of itself, there are a bunch of slipknots,false knots---but the "stable" elements would seem to point to the idea that the way in which energy patterns determines its nature.

{Think about the chlorphill molecule transforming light to mass....one hell of a catch, a photon and moving at 180,000 mps to a full stop and not drop it as heat. damn.}

Before going on to life/death. Quantum kinds of questions/assertions;

Random is the operating instructions/ "Chaos is our most important product"----Chaos underlies all, random process is a driver that produces order (i got no idea how).

Mind, human mind can shift probability. Again I have no idea how. I'll suggest that this underlies "luck", "prayer", maybe fortune telling, etc. Some of the elements that are required to do it consciously are: being able to "see" the thing as done and having no doubt (faith/belief).

I suspect that it is not so much the strength of the "force" that operates so much as where the leverage is applied and how. Altering the probability of an electron being in a particular orbital at a given time is unlikely to stop a train, having it drop out of the atom and manifest as a free electron at the right time during a calculation in a chip or brain could corrupt/alter the outcome. Hey, its a crude fast example---elabortate it.

There is no way we dodge haveing to deal with some maths and for sure the deep theory/basis/assumptions of probability and statistics and it your going to do relativity and quantum effects---its all math.

How many dimensions are you postulating for this n dimensional space we exist in? 4,12,23?

Now the life/death metaphore.

Think of a rope, made up of differnt segments of different colors and materials such that there are distinct segments, ie white cotton becomes black hemp,becomes white hemp, becomes black cotton. You are a knot in the rope. In this case I speak not of the "self', the "I" sensation, rather I mean all that is the constituent material/energy/whatever required for "being",existance.

A knot is a pattern not a thing, when I untie a knot it goes away when I retie it it comes back into existance.

So this knot tied in a multi segmented rope is you. I can slide you along the rope, through a transition zone, and into a new segment. your white and cotton, black and hemp,white and hemp, black and cotton.

Lots of things come from here. Furies at their looms. Or questions about the programer and computer software self, or....

The rope is your experience/existance/duration. If the transition from white to black is "death" because as an observer I am unable to see black, then to me the knot appears to be gone, though infact it is still intact only on a piece of the rope that's invisible. Thinking about the process of a knot slipping through the transition zone and what it entails, especially if each strand of the rope is of differing lenght so that the splice is not a sharp boundery rather a transition zone (See Book of the Dead---Tibet/tantra) may give you some reassurance ken.

Other quesstions thoughts, if the knots are tied and retied rather than slipped along, then????? Seaking solace, I like to think that pattern, like mass and energy is concerved. I cannot give a mechanism, do not know its true,but it seems like something nature would do. Something I'd like to be true. (Fairport Convention---Meet on the Ledge.)

And its still a big standing wave.(or not)

-- Anonymous, April 01, 2000