I’ve spoken of conversion as the path to personal change, but why conversion? What’s the magic of this particular path? To understand this, I want to briefly explain a common mistake materialists make and how, although we know of nothing in this universe outside of the simple and elegant material interactions described by our physics, it is actually spirit that currently dictates much of our lives on planet earth.
When we speak of conversion, what’s actually happening on the physical plane? I’m working to convey meaning through my words, and you’re working to understand them. When we connect, and if what I mean is meaningful and right for you, your brain begins to change. Certain neural pathways that used to connect deeply get obliterated, and new pathways are born. What makes Thanatism particularly impactful is that the neural pathways it targets form the base of a tree from which the branches and leaves of your thoughts mostly grow.
What determines how those new neural pathways will form though? A simple and naive materialism would say that your eyes transmit certain lightwaves to your retina, those light waves are converted to chemical and electrical signals in your brain, and it’s those chemical and electrical signals that form the new pathways. This is entirely accurate, but when it comes to an adaptive, information processing system like your brain, the physics are simply the medium of change, not the cause.
If rather than reading these words, you heard them spoken, although the physics would be entirely other, the neural transformation would be largely the same. In other words, it’s not the deterministic bouncing of particles that determines what you think, but rather the logic or meaning of what is being conveyed that shapes the ultimate physical outcome. Just as it is the logic of the code in a video game that determines what’s eventually displayed on your screen rather than the physics of your particular gaming platform which that logic utilizes, so too is it the logic or meaning of what is said that determines the restructuring of your brain.
This conversation or logic or meaning is where spirit resides and this is the true focus of power in our human world. We can’t change the laws of physics. Our social institutions are so rigidly manifested that they are largely beyond our control. Our minds however, can change in a millisecond. These words, their meaning, as they are being processed by you right now are having their effect. They are pushing against well-established neural pathways, and if your brain is ready, they will rewrite you at your core.
You are spirit incarnate. You are the history of biological competition on this earth. You are the history of the birth of sexuality. You are the history of the first meaningful grunts our ancestors ever shared. You are the history of countless dialogs between people. You are the history of a million words written down. You are nothing but your history and your biology, but that doesn’t mean that’s all you can ever be.
You can’t understand anything except through what you are, but through words, I can convey a different spiritual history conferred upon me by my biology, my culture, my family, countless teachers and peers. I can channel their collective voice and share that voice with you. You may reject this voice, and that may be as it should be. You may, however, let this be a moment where you let a new voice wipe away the defenses that hide from you what you already know and fear. You might allow yourself to be reprogrammed at the lowest level, and if you do so, that new you can speak, and through your voice, there shall emerge a new us, and that new us is how we will change the world.