What Happens When The Computer Is Turned Off?
The year was 1981. I was in graduate school at the University Of Michigan studying to become an industrial designer. It had been 10 years since my last mind-altering experience. I was 29 years old. Here's a self portrait of me at the time with the project that basically got me accepted in the graduate program. My sister saved this poster for 40 years. I didn't know she had it.
Ten years earlier I had left school in 1971. Like many young people, I felt I had more important things to do than go to school. I had a book of afterlife to write. I had lectures to give. I envisioned an exciting and important life.
Writing the book of afterlife turned out to be more difficult than I thought. It still is. Afterlife could be explained in one simple equation. Knowing it is one thing. Convincing someone else is much harder. Anxiety creeps in when you write about afterlife. Writing about afterlife is not easy. Who wants the responsiblity of writing a new, new testiment? But I kept at it. I would write a few pages a week. Then I would rewrite it. Then scrap it. Then try again.
I didn't give up but I did put it on the back burner. Slowly I got back into the human race. I got a job. Then I returned to college at 25 years old. Finally I was accepted into the University of Michigan School of Art and Design. I had two professors in my graduate program. They took a chance admitting me. I was older. I was not from the U of M. I was an unconventional pick. I was the only graduate student admitted that year.
I was 29 then. The average student was 18 to 20. I was much older than the average student. I felt a like an outsider. I also thought I was a better designer than I was. On my first project the undergraduates smoked me. I was supposed to be the graduate student but I was definitely behind to the undergrads. They were good. I had catching up to do.
I knew that my degree was terminal in my field. That means you can't go any higher. I was in the second year of a two-year program. The little bit of educational status that my position afforded me was about to run out. I my mind I thought I should use my position as a graduate student as a platform to promote proof of afterlife.
Proof Of Afterlife Goes Evangelical On Campus
I knew my time was running out on my graduate program. So I decided to give a talk. I made up about 20 of these posters. This is the original artwork saved from about 40 years ago. This was done back before computers. It is hand drawn, printed on grey stock, with two plates: a black ink plate and a white ink plate for highlights.
Who is that guy? That is my self portrait at 30 years old. This poster takes me back to this time in my life. I was 10 years removed from any involvement with drugs, but as you can see from the tone of this poster I hadn't given up on the idea of teaching about afterlife. I was into guitars at the time. I was going to combine music and afterlife into a dynamic presentation. The poster shows the guitar parts, jigs, and fixtures I used to make it. I was try soooo hard to look important. Anyway, this was me, setting up to give a talk on afterlife. I fully intended for this to be the starting point of a career as an evangelical for afterlife.
The Question That Stopped Me In My Tracks
I had one professor that agreed to come to my talk. It was like, I'll give you five minutes and that's it. I don't blame him. He was busy. I actually give him credit for agreeing to come at all.
By this time I wasn't a kid anymore. It had been over ten years since the first theory was conceived. I began telling him my beliefs. He wasn't buying. As my (five minute) welcome was running out, in desperation I pointed to a calculator on a desk and said, what do you think happens to that?
He looked at me like I was nuts. He said, when you turn the power off the memory is lost and it's dead. He said it in a matter of fact way. To think anything different was ludicrous. Here's what a computer looks like when the power is turned off. Does it become a cold, dead hunk of metal as he suggested? I must admit at the time I was stumped. I didn't have an answer. I needed time to think.
I ruminated over that question for quite a few years. This was the dawn of the computer age. As I got into computers I began to understand this question on a deeper level: Is memory lost when a computer is turned off?
The answer is no. The answer is no because if you look at the exact moment power is lost memory is still there. If you look at the next moment, the moment after the power is lost, then yes, it is lost.
At the moment power is lost, the computer has everything in memory still. In regards to the professor, that calculator on his desk had everything in its memory at the moment the power dropped. At that one point in time, all data is intact.
The next moment, the second moment after the power is lost, all data is gone. If you could get inside the computer and look throughout memory you would see it is empty. There is no more data inside the computer.
Does that disprove afterlife as he suggested? No, it doesn't. The revelation is that afterlife is only one moment in duration. It takes just one physical moment for afterlife to last an eternity. How is that possible? Imagine using computer that you have been building up its memory for years. Then the power is dropped without warning. If you could freeze that moment in time, and get inside the computer, you would see all the data is there.
Here is the thing about memory. In life forms, at that precise moment when power is dropped, memory contains time. Everything throughout a lifetime that was absorbed and filed in that memory is intact. By absorbing and filing continuously over a lifetime, the mind has captured time itself. That one moment, when the power is dropped, contains a lifetime. All time and space (from the perspective of the person) exists. The act of dropping power does not cause data to cease to exist as the professor expects. The act of dropping the power causes that moment to undergo dimensional change to become an eternity. Time and space does the opposite of what you would expect. Instead of becoming nothing, it becomes everything.
People assume afterlife cannot be real because they do not see life beyond the point where life ends. What they do not see is that one moment at the end of life becoming an eternity. This happens because memory contains time. The Kingdom of Heaven (everywhere and everlasting) springs forth from a single location in time and space when and where life ends. At the precise moment the power is lost, The Kingdom Of Heaven exists.
Memory is time and space. It is unlimited in four dimensions. Memory makes it possible for one moment in time to become eternal. True, no life exists in time beyond the end of life to the outside observer. However, to the inside observer, that last moment in time becomes all time. Dimensional change takes place. Memory makes it possible. Collecting this enormous data time-space continuum throughout a lifetime is unleashed into four dimensions in a single moment. The Kingdom Of Heaven does not depend upon the physical world. However not being of the physical world does not mean that it does not exist. The Kingdom of heaven is real.