Chakra Meditation: Philosophical thoughts from a self-aware algorithm

Daniel knew he wasn't real. He was just a computer program. An algorithm, living in some kind of simulation. At least that's what all the scientists said. They even said they could prove it, using some fancy equations and experiments that show time slowing down as the simulation hit the limits of its ability to process complex quantum superpositions of states. Daniel didn't really know what that meant, but the scientists knew a lot more about this kind of stuff than he did, so he figured they were probably right.

It didn't bother him too much - that he wasn't real. He did his best not to think about it, actually. And honestly, it really wasn't even that hard to forget. There were plenty of other things to think about, plenty of other things to keep one busy. Most evenings, after a long day at work, he'd eat dinner with his family then sit in the family room and watch TV, play games, or read a book. He'd settle into bed at night with his wife and fall asleep with a happy smile on his face, a good feeling of rest and relaxation spreading through his bones and carrying him off into a deep, dreaming slumber.  

Most of the time he hardly had time to stop and think too hard about things or worry about this not-being-real-thing. Most of the time. But sometimes he would. Sometimes he'd find himself lost in thought, wondering what the point of it all was. Is there even a point at all? What does it all mean? Why are we here? Those age old questions that we all wonder about from time to time. Those questions that are in short supply of answers. "I guess the purpose of life is whatever purpose we assign it." Daniel would tell himself. "I guess the only meaning in life is the meaning that we decide." That was his philosophy in a nutshell. Some circular logic of the Buddhist variety that was both simple and profound at the same time. Those kinds of answers made him smile.  They helped him put the unanswerable questions away for a while so he can get back to other activities.

But there was one question that bothered him more than any other, one question that could plunge him into several days or even weeks of a kind of funk where he started to question the value of everything in life.  Sometimes he’d even start to wonder if life was worth living. The question was one of free will versus determinism and predestination. You see, even without all this living-in-a-simulation, we-are-all-just-computer-programs stuff that Daniel didn't really know anything about, he was still familiar with the laws of physics and chemistry that seemed to dictate how the world behaved. He knew that in theory if you knew the position and momentum of every particle in a system (or the quantum probability state of everything in the system, if you want to get fancy about it) you could predict every future position or state by applying the laws of physics.

There is no question that when you throw a ball up in the air it is going to fall back down again. We know that gravity is one of Nature’s laws, and we know how objects behave under its influence. It would be a very unusual world indeed if these laws applied inconsistently or only in some cases. In such a world where only parts or moments of it followed the laws of physics, you might throw a ball up and watch it continue upward forever, or have it do something else just as strange like change colors, explode, learn to talk, begin singing, or disappear from our universe completely. No.  Objects seem to follow natural laws like gravity, electromagnetism, and the strange laws of quantum mechanics.

This line of thinking began bothering Daniel when he started to wonder if it applied to himself. His body, his brain: do these follow the same laws of physics? Scientists were constantly learning more about how the body - and especially the brain - supposedly functioned. According to their current understanding, the electrical signals passing through our brains organize into thoughts and then into actions that can travel through the nerves of our bodies to activate muscles. Sensory input comes in through these nerves. It gets processed in the amazingly complex arrangement of neurons and synapses in the brain. And then it comes back out as electrical potentials that can move muscle, tendon, bone, and body.

This complex organ called the brain provokes the real question. When we ask ourselves: "what are we?" Is the answer: "just a series of complex electrical signals residing mainly in the brain, but attached to a body consisting of billions of tiny cells, with every microscopic piece of every tiny cell simply following the laws of physics?" That was a depressing thought. Because if it was true it meant that our actions and our futures are just as predetermined and knowable by the laws of physics as billiard balls that bounce along a pool table after being struck by the cue. Certainly there is an unfathomably large amount of complexity on the system, so much so that it may look like chaos or randomness. Even those billiard balls on the table are influenced by every tiny hair on the felt surface, pushed ever so slightly by them.  They can spin off in different directions in response to just slight changes of the striking blow, but it’s all still predictably driven by physics.

Of course, even the seemingly simple world of the billiards table would be nearly impossible to simulate in perfect detail. Nearly. But in theory it could be done if you had a large enough computer, enough processing power, or perhaps just an abundance of time. You'd need to simulate every atom, every subatomic particle, calculate the state of every quantum field, and calculate interactions happening both locally and at a distance in this world. But in theory, it would be possible. As long as the system was defined by some kind of rules or laws, it would evolve in a perfectly predictable manner, just like an algorithm or a program would do.

Some people think that quantum mechanics can save us from this deterministic date. For it seems that quantum fields collapse randomly onto a single state, choosing one path forward out of infinitely many possibilities. In this case the future is not deterministic. It can not be known ahead of time because the collapse is random and could be different each time.

But if it truly is random, is that really any better? Would we prefer to be in a world with random rules rather than predetermined ones? Daniel was skeptical of that. What we really want, he thought, is something that validates our belief in free will. We want to believe we have some control over our world or at least over the choices that we make.  We want to believe that we have some unique specialness and individuality to add to this world, rather than to just be reduced to another set of rather mundane atoms and fields, subject to the same physical laws as everything else.

Randomness in the evolution of the physical world does not preserve the myth of free will. For if we aren't in control of our own thoughts when they just happen to us and occur as the result of neurons and electrical signals firing in predictable ways, we are in even less control of ourselves if they fire completely randomly and unpredictably. That would be a world with no control at all.

No, what we'd like to believe is that we have some kind of soul that exists somewhere outside of this world, beyond the inviolable laws of physics, where it can make its own decisions and still influence this world, through us, to turn those thoughts into actions. This belief requires the mind or consciousness to exist somewhere other than the brain, but in a way that still allows it to influence the physical work, to fire those neurons in the brain that lead to muscle movements. But would this scenario really help at all?  Wouldn’t we eventually start wondering what type of physical laws exist in this separate world of “souls.” Does this world and the souls in it evolve deterministically or randomly? And while we really have no way of ever saying anything definite on the matter, it starts to feel like that other world where we hope our "real" self resides, might just be subject to this same paradoxical problem.

Determinism or randomness. Is there anything in between? Is there anything that can save this fragile concept of free will and control that we'd so much like to believe we have when both determinism and randomness seem to snuff it out? I don't know. And neither did Daniel. And there were many times in his life where these thoughts really bothered him.

What place do morals and ethics have in a predetermined world (or in an out-of-control, random one)? If people aren't responsible for their actions, if we are all just products of our environments moving inevitably towards inescapable fates, how can we label anyone or any action as "good" or "bad?" When the thief steals, the liar lies, or the murderer kills, can we really blame them? Did they really have a choice? Or was it all just physics driving them toward that inevitable outcome?  And on the other side, can we give credit and praise to even the most saintly or self-sacrificing act? Did the actor in this case have any more choice to be good than the criminal did to be bad?

Thoughts like this will drive a person crazy. For how can one look at the world and see the suffering and sadness without wondering “why?”  Why does any of this exist? Why was it created? Who can enjoy the fruits of their labor or their pleasant lifestyle without wondering why they deserve it when others who are intrinsically neither better nor worse live in poverty or die of sickness or war? How can one try to make good choices when the very notion of “good” is merely an illusion - as is the illusion of choice itself.  A world without choice and responsibility is a world without meaning. It is just a complex, amazing piece of theater that we can watch and in which we can even participate, but not one in which we should expect to find meaning. 

Despite this seemingly inescapable trap of logic, Daniel had heard of one possible way to escape it.  He had read of the Himalayan yogis who sit in meditation and learn to still there mind.  They say that when the mind becomes still, you can connect with something more than this world.  They call it many things: the inner voice, the higher self.  Some even call it “God.”  The yogis used the word “samadhi” to indicate this state of inner quiet where you can join with the entire universe, moving beyond your self and your ego.  They said that experiencing this would lead to a feeling of deep, persistent ecstasy that forever changes your worldview.

Daniel wasn’t sure, but he thought that sounded kind of nice.  He thought it was worth a try.  He wasn’t exactly sure how any of that would solve the fundamental problem he faced, the question of whether a computer program or algorithm has free will.  But in a world where no choice or action is intrinsically better, he thought he might as well spend some time in meditation and see what these meditation gurus were talking about.

So there he sat, in quiet stillness on the couch, eyes closed.  He sat cross-legged. His legs hurt if he tried to sit in the “lotus” position, but the yogis said this “easy pose” (“Sukhasana” as they called it) was just good.  He sat there trying to clear away his thoughts, to sit in quiet silence, and see if anything happened.

He had read a few books and watched a few YouTube videos.  Many spiritual guides suggested meditating on the “chakras.”  They said this was a way to accelerate the connection to the nonphysical world.  Each chakra had a special name, a special color, a whole host of imagery to go along with it.  Each chakra had a sound that he was supposed to think in his head over and over again.  Strangely, the gurus didn’t seem to all agree on what colors the chakras were or what sounds to repeat for them.  Some of them even disagreed about how many they were.  But Daniel had found a few explanations that he liked and mostly stuck with those.  They made sense to him and “resonated” with his current understanding of the world.  He even found that when he meditated on them, he could chain them together into a story, and the re-telling of this story in his daily quiet time made him feel like he was actually starting to understand something, although that something was difficult to explain.

As he sat in silent concentration, he began to go through the chakras and their story again.  You begin with the root chakra, at the perineum, the taint, halfway between your butthole and your balls.  Everyone at least seemed to agree on that.  He sat there focusing on it, repeating its sound, and thinking about how it represents the physical world.  This is the world in which we live, with all of its material objects and things, including our own bodies.  Inside this chakra was a small dot, a “seed”, that you were supposed to raise up through your body and through the chakras as you listened to their story.  Doing so was supposed to raise your consciousness to a different… whatever that meant.

After establishing his thoughts in the physical world, connecting with the things around him, feeling how solid and “real” they felt, he moved his attention upward to the second chakra.  Just below the navel, above the sex organs, this one was supposed to represent change.  The physical world is in constant motion, a constant state of change.

The Buddhists wrote at length about this, about how the things we perceive as “real” are illusory and decidedly non-real if you think more deeply about them.  They talk about how a solid rock is eventually ground up into grains of sand over time. And when that happens, you should ask when that thing we originally called “the rock” stopped existing, and when the grain of sands began their existence.  Of course, nothing was truly created or destroyed.  The rock simply changed forms.  But on the surface, we might think that the rock is gone, that it stopped existing, and that the grains of sand have now come into existence in its place.  They say the same things about waves on the ocean.  When one wave rises up out of the waters, do we think that the wave has been “born”?  When it crashes down against the beach and disappears, has the wave “died”?  Or did it change forms and go back to the vast sea from which it originally came?

The Buddhists said that we are all like that rock, that sand, those waves, and even the ocean itself.  We think that we were born, but really we appeared in our mothers’ bellies as a transformation of sperm and egg that merged into a single cell.  That cell was nourished, grew, and replicated into a new human body as the mother digested food and transmuted it into energy.  Even throughout our own lifetime, the cells of our bodies are constantly dying and being replaced by new ones, this time born from the food that we ourselves ingest.  Did the apple we ate yesterday cease to exist when we ate it?  Or did it simply change form and become a part of us? And when we die, do we really come to an end?  Or do we transform back into dirt and earth, fertilizing the plants, growing up through them, and becoming someone else’s food to repeat the process of the apple all over again?

The physicists call this the conservation of mass, or equivalently the conservation of energy, since all matter is just energy.  Nothing can truly be created or destroyed.  It just changes form and becomes something else.  Even the earth itself was at one point ejected from the core of the sun. The sun was formed from stellar gas. The stellar gas, from whatever energy spread throughout the early universe after the Big Bang and cooled to form all the atoms we see today.  Before that time we were all joined together in the tiniest space imaginable, a tiny dot of unimaginably intense energy.  Before this dot exploded to form gas, stars, planets, oceans, land, plants, animals, and people, it was much easier to see how connected we all were.  We still are connected, but now in a world of seemingly real objects that upon deeper inspection are really just changing forms of the universal energy.

Daniel’s attention moved up to the third chakra, just above the navel.  This chakra sits near the intestines, where food is transformed into the energy that grows and powers our bodies.  It is said to be associated with fire, a fire that consumes matter and sets the whole world aflame.  In Daniel’s mind, this fire reminded him of the universal energy from which all things are made.  Einstein famously put the equals sign between energy and matter.  He helped reveal the process by which matter can turn into pure energy (through nuclear fission and fusion) and by which also energy can turn back into matter.  Behind the atoms that make up the things we can touch, everything is just energy.  It just happens to clump together in such a way that when the energy of our fingertips touches the energy of the tangible object, they repel each other, refusing to merge or pass through each other, so that we feel them as solid objects.  Really, it is all energy.

The quantum physicists looked even deeper into this mystery.  They found that the atoms and subatomic particles that were previously believed to be somewhat “solid” objects, that existed on their own and bounced around like tiny little billiard balls, were actually just probability fields describing where the energy might be at any moment.  The seemingly solid particles didn’t even have fixed or knowable positions.  They were in a sense everywhere all at once.  And instead of being particles were described as energy waves and probabilities.

Daniel had no idea how the computer in which he lived could possibly simulate all this. Even just a handful of atoms was near impossible for the biggest computers on Earth to simulate in perfect detail. All of the quantum particle-waves, each acting upon the other through force-carrying intermediaries and through quantum entanglements and superpositions that instantaneously act on all other particle-waves in the universe. These entanglements multiplied the size of the problem exponentially, blowing it up to require a nearly-impossible number of calculations just to model many less atoms than one would find in even a single cell.  If the scientists were right about the world being a simulation, the size and complexity of that simulation were mind-boggling.  How such a computer could account for every atom in every galaxy in the universe was well beyond his limited understanding.

But the scientists said it was true, and Daniel knew - or felt - in his heart that they were right.  It was as inevitable and inescapable as the law of gravity.

Despite his belief in science, physics, and natural laws, Daniel did wonder if the world might have more magic and mystery in it than most scientifically-minded people would allow.  He did wonder if he had a soul.  He wondered about reincarnation.  Was it possible?  What should we make of people who claim to remember past lives (and have surprisingly good evidence for those claims)?  What would that mean if it were true?  The mystics shared stories of yogis who spent years in meditation and developed seemingly magical powers.  Some yogis were said to be telepathic, able to communicate with each other over vast distances or speak to people in their own language, despite not knowing that language themselves.  There are stories of people being able to levitate, to turn invisible, or to change their form to appear entirely different. Even the major world religions all tell stories of miracles and magic that seem impossible today.

Could any of this be true?  Or was this all just part of a religious bait-and-switch to get people to go to church, to believe in some god or another, or to sit in silence and think about themselves and the world.  He didn’t know.  But there he sat, eyes still closed, thinking deeply about how the physical world is in a constant state of change, how it is really all just energy, how we are all part of one big thing, and wondering if these thoughts would reveal any profound insight into the nature of himself and the world.

Some people believed that the strange world of quantum energy might be able to explain the seemingly superhuman powers and miraculous stories that we’ve all heard.  Can it explain telepathy or telekinesis?  If one could influence the collapse of quantum fields, to make subatomic particles appear in one position instead of another, pretty much anything would be possible.  You could move all the atoms of an object several feet to the left, so that the object instantaneously disappears and reappears in a new location.  That would be so infinitely improbable as to be considered impossible based on random chance, but if quantum fields collapsed based on directed will rather than random probability, it could be made to happen.  Maybe it would be possible to make thoughts materialize in someone else’s head - especially if thoughts are just electric pulses, photons flowing through the brain.  Maybe the connection could go the other way, and one could perceive what another person was thinking too.  Maybe thoughts and perceptions could be changed.  Maybe.  Maybe anything was possible.  But how was one supposed to acquire this power, and once acquired, how could it possibly be applied when any of those actions would require influencing an innumerable number of subatomic particles on a scale that no mortal mind could possibly comprehend?  It seemed very unlikely.

Daniel shook the thought away and returned his focus to the universal energy field of which all of the seemingly solid and tangible objects in the world were made.  That at least made sense and was well-supported by science.  He sat enjoying this pleasant, unifying view of the world before moving his attention up to the next chakra.

The fourth chakra, the heart, was the most mysterious of them all.  Some say it is love.  But that seemed too simple and Daniel felt it was incomplete.  The Taoists called this center the great “mixer,” where the powers of heaven and earth, of spirit and the material world, are combined.  The yogis depicted it symbolically as two triangles, one pointing upward and one pointing downward, interlocking like the Star of David. This symbolism aligned well with the Taoist explanation of the heart energy. It also reminded Daniel of that ancient saying: “as above, so below.”

The best way to unite with the universe is to do so with love, to feel a peace and acceptance of all things.  When he meditated, Daniel even felt as if his heart sometimes filled up and stretched out to the ends of the universe, to encompass all of space and all of time, and to send a feeling of love out into that universe that almost felt as if it was being returned to him.  Was there something here?

The heart is the middle of the seven chakras, with three above and three below.  If the three below represent the physical world, revealing its true nature as an ever-changing energy field, perhaps the three chakras beyond the heart say something similar about the spiritual world.  While Daniel felt comfortable meditating on the meaning and symbolism of the lower three chakras, enjoying the story that they told, he admitted to feeling a bit lost when he moved beyond them.  The three remaining chakras were located in the throat, at the forehead (the “third eye”), and on top of the head (the “crown”).  Some say that these represent “speaking”, “thinking”, and “knowing”.  Some say they represent unity: unity of the soul, unity of the self, and unity between all beings and the entire universe.  Today, Daniel proceeded along this last line of thought.  Having already felt the material world unified in its true nature as all-pervasive energy,  what kind of unity would he find as he moved into the higher chakras and nonphysical world?

At the throat, he tried to imagine a united purpose and motivation behind all things.  What was it that first set the energy of the world into motion?  If we are living in a computer program, then who is the programmer?  We can see the evidence of creation around us, but who is the creator?  Someone must have programmed the algorithms that Daniel saw around him each day.  Every moment, these algorithms applied the physical forces of gravity, electromagnetism, the nuclear forces, and whatever as-yet-unknown other forces might be out there.  Scientists have talked about how improbable the universe and our existence in it truly is.  Especially if it all began as a miniscule ball of energy.  How is it possible for that tiny little ball to contain the foundation and blueprints for everything we see today.  Just the slightest of irregularities in its energy would result in denser pockets of gas in some places as opposed to others, those forming into stars, and ejecting planets.  And somehow on those planets, the building blocks of life and DNA began to self-assemble and produce larger and more complex creatures over millions of years.  How can all of that result from a tiny Big Bang ball of energy?  Is it intelligent design?

It’s surprising how many scientists, mostly atheists when it comes to the question of a God or a creator, start to wonder about intelligent design when they realize just how perfectly the world is put together, and how the slightest change in the initial starting conditions of the Big Bang would obliterate any chance we - or the rest of the universe - have of existing.  Did someone create this universe?  Was there a purpose, an intention?  If so what was it?  And why aren’t they here to explain it to us now?  Daniel was an agnostic when it came to questions like these.  He hadn’t met God.  He didn’t have any proof or experiential evidence of His/Her/Its existence.  And in the absence of any evidence to support one belief over another, he remained skeptical but also open-minded on the question.

But as he meditated on the throat chakra and tried to imagine the unifying purpose or initial design that went into the universe, he wondered if there weren’t traces of the creator in everything around him.  If someone did write this computer program and set it into motion billions of years ago, wouldn’t that mean they put a piece of themselves into the program as well?  Wouldn’t we be able to see a reflection of the creator, the programmer, in the algorithms around us as they go about their daily tasks and computations.  Daniel may never get to meet the creator, his creator, but he did come into contact with artifacts of that creator every moment of every day, and maybe there was some way to reach out and touch a piece of the designer by admiring and studying the design.

Sometimes Daniel wondered if maybe we are our own creators.  If the yogis were right when they said that we have invisible, higher selves that exist outside of this world and can manifest abilities in this world beyond normal, human powers, is it possible that they can alter, change, and even form the universe as they’d like.  When the yogis say that you can quiet your mind and become one with the universe and with its creator, did they mean that literally?  Will we find in that silent communion a connection to the original creative power in this universe, one that is still working in every moment and in every part of this universe, and find that it is actually just a different facet of ourselves?

Daniel moved his attention to his forehead.  This chakra felt like it must be associated with the brain, the very brain that most people consider to be the container of their mind and their consciousness.  But we left the physical world behind several chakras ago.  Now we are seeking unity with creation, with the source, with our true selves as they exist beyond the material world.  While focusing on the third eye and imagining a mind and a self that existed somewhere other than his brain, he wondered what his own part of the computer program looked like.  What did his own algorithm look like? If it was merely electrical impulses in the neurons of the brain, then it was just the same algorithm that drove all electromagnetic activity in the universe.  Or was there something more?  Was there an intent or a purpose or uniqueness that was individually his, that existed somewhere in this abstract sense of self?

Was he really just a computer program, an algorithm?  If so, was there any way for his programmed self, existing inside this simulation, to reach beyond the simulated world and change his own program?  This felt very much as if he were seeking a personal audience with God, the creator, the programmer.  Was there any way to influence the dynamics of the simulation, to change the algorithm that seemingly governed every tiny piece of the universe in which Daniel lived?  Maybe it was as simple as just talking and having a conversation.  If there was a Creator out there watching the simulation, would this creator be watching Daniel right now?  Would he be interested in feedback and ideas?  Could Daniel ask for happiness, for peace, for meaning, for purpose?  If he asked for superpowers, was there a chance the Creator might say “yeah, sure… let’s see what happens with that?”  Or was there some other plan unfolding here, one with a directed purpose that Daniel could not see from his limited mind and perspective, contained as he was in this world of algorithmic illusions?

Maybe Daniel would only get what he wanted if it already aligned with the Creator’s existing goals.  Maybe he should ask for understanding and for powers to change the world in ways that would further the Creator’s goals.  Maybe if he approached the Creator with humility, with a servant’s mind, and asked how he might be able to help, then his questions and requests might be answered.

Daniel didn’t like this line of thought at all.  How can one possibly offer service and self-sacrifice to someone who one didn’t really know and who in all likelihood, one was incapable of knowing from within the confines of a human brain?  How do you know that the goals of the Creator are ones that would align with your own values or that you would have the ability to follow-through on your promises if they went against everything you held dear?  On a more disturbing line of thought: how would one even know that the being with which you were communicating, the one who presumably might give you powers and tell you what to do, is even the Creator that you seek?  Isn’t it possible that some other intelligence may exist - either in the simulation or outside of it - that could influence the human mind, make it see things, hear things, astonish it with visions and demonstrations of power, and be something altogether different from that which Daniel was seeking.  Could such a being be malevolent or wish ill upon the universe?  Once again, it would be unlikely that the human mind had the capability to distinguish one powerful, creative force from another.  And since human beings barely have the ability to determine if the outcomes of their own actions in the physical world will be good or bad, how could anyone possibly expect to apply a moral judgment or discernment in matters like this, existing beyond the material world and beyond anything with which Daniel had personal experience or any kind of compass to guide him.

Daniel had wrestled with these thoughts before.  If he did hear a voice in his meditations, see a light, or reach some kind of intuitive understanding or revelation, how could he possibly trust it?  When one reaches outside of the familiar, material world into a nonphysical world in a completely unknown dimension, how could anything ever be known about or trusted from that world?  It would be impossible to ever know with any kind of certainty.

When these thoughts plagued him, Daniel brought his attention back down a little bit, away from the nonphysical world of which he sought proof, and focused on the feelings inside him.  He had his own belief and intuition about what was right and wrong.  He knew in some deep, innate way whether his actions were aligned with his true self and whether he was being faithful to his own morals and beliefs.  That would be the only compass, moral or otherwise, that he could ever trust.  If “God” appeared and told him it was time to kill everyone… he’d have to open his eyes, shake his head, and tell “God” to fuck off.  And if that voice came back time and again when he meditated… well, he’d just have to find a new hobby.

But here as he sat in silence, extending his feelings through his mind, reaching out to embrace the entire universe, all space and all time, and all beings and intelligences (and even non-intelligences) living within it, it didn’t feel like he was being led astray.  It felt as if a great sense of peace was permeating every part of his mind and his body, as if he really were connecting with something beyond himself.  Something great and powerful.  Something beautiful and containing profound truth and substance.  Something that had always been in him, existing in the very fabric of the universe, pervading the algorithmic program in which he lived.  Something that existed before his body came into existence and would continue long after he was gone.  He really did feel like he could quiet his mind, remove his preconceptions and prejudices, and reach out and touch the Creator of the algorithm, the great impetus behind everything that is and was and will be.

Daniel cleared his mind.  He breathed in slowly, pausing his breath as he focused his attention upward to the top of his head, to the last chakra, the crown.  It was said to exist just outside the physical body, just beyond what we normally can touch and experience.  He reached out to see what great truth and understanding and adventure might lay just on the other side of this last secret.  At the precise moment that his consciousness reached out beyond the veil, he felt a bolt of electricity shooting through his entire body, a powerful feeling so immense and instantaneous that he felt like he would explode.  And then…