Here is the torturous intro to my colorful memoir (which has lots of funny stuff in it):

Do you lead a charmed life? Would you like to lead a charmed life, or at least increase the charm in your life?

You can; but before you can, you must learn to recognize sometimes very subtle, oblique events and indicators Life offers you from time-to-time.

I hope this series of true anecdotes from my life will ring familiar in your life and alert you to the presence of The Loop.

THE LOOP

Your present is influenced by your future ...which is influenced by your present.

Why do we find some things interesting, and others not? What is it that may fascinate a child about a certain subject so that it becomes his or her lifelong passion?

Why is there "love at first sight"?

Because of The Loop. It's very simple (the best things always are).

Reduced to its essentials, The Loop theory states that: Everything Lives:

Space-time is not only curved, it is circular;* Existence, therefore, constantly creates Itself so that Everything Lives.

What?

Life is not a by-product of the Universe....the Universe exists as a result of the force of Life, not the other way around. Life (or Existence or Consciousness--they are the same thing) is the force by which matter is organized in the Universe. The Universe is, therefore, a physical organism, driven by the force of Life in total harmony with Itself beyond the linear constraints of Time. Life is everywhere, in all things. It IS.

The force of Life is motion. Motion requires Time in order to exist. No Time, no motion. No motion, no Life......no anything. Time is like the crest of a wave moving through Existence that we, as "Time Surfers," ride towards the beach. I think it's possible--and in fact probable--that not only do we "surf" Time, a part of us can "go outside" of Time and experience and observe it by viewing its effects from the beach....being able to see not only behind the Time wave, but in front of it as well.

Another relativistic way of looking at it is imagining Time as a river and we are simultaneously bobbing corks floating along that "still" river, passing the "moving" riverbank---watching and experiencing Time "going by"---and, we are also observers on the "still" riverbank, watching the "moving" river, removed from the linear constraints of Time so we can not only see our position in the river, we can see up and down the river at any point in its flow.

Let me include the following from "The Book of Love":

Imagine yourself as God, All That Is or Existence. Let's call it Existence, to get away from the G-word. You are omnipotent, but are locked in a deprivation chamber, denied the use of your senses. You are aware of yourself, but that's about all.

Not much fun, is it?

What do we, as humans, do to add color and interest to our lives? We invent games and activities to amuse us and entertain us.

If you were Existence and had nothing but awareness of yourself and a limitless, powerful imagination, maybe you would invent a game you could play....a very complex game (because you are a very complex entity), to amuse you and interest you. This game would need rules and a playing field or game board.....so you create the universe in your unlimited imagination, which obeys certain laws of physics but which also is a direct product of your rich imagination and therefore has "you" in every particle of its being.

A living dream.

You need "pieces" to play the game, so you add life. And just like chess pieces have their own character and personality and are also umbilically tied to the person who is moving them about the chessboard, so are we, to Existence. Chess pieces "reflect" what, and who, the Player is. How the Player thinks.

Maybe we do, too.

Like a small toy company that starts out making simple toys and games and progresses to making more sophisticated ones, so your "game" develops through the very clever device you have introduced called Time. Without Time, you have nothing...in fact, in order to even break out of your deprivation chamber you need Time.

Life is motion---that's what it is---and motion requires Time in order to exist...in order for anything to happen. No Time, no motion. No motion, no Life.

Because you are Very Clever, you produce limitless games all over the universe which grow and become themselves and work out their own rules of survival, with a little help from you to guide things along.

But you don't just want to be an observer, moving pieces around a board....your imagination is much better than that and you have the ability to create whatever you can think of. You are a multi-dimensional personality, so what do you do? Just as human children can do, you actually can become a part of every piece on every board....virtual reality on a vast scale! Just the same as your human self getting lost in a good book and imagining you are there and you are the protagonist.

You are not alone anymore, you are part of everything that lives because this is your creation....and everything in the universe, including atoms, LIVE. They do what they do because you have provided the living matrix for them to DO and BE according to your rules.

You create sentient life; biological life....life that can organize itself within the system you've created and life that can think for itself, struggling and surviving. In order for it to proceed and develop, you give it adaptability and the ability to reproduce....but because you are so Very Clever, you split reproduction into two halves....where one part of the species must interact with the complementary other part in order to proceed. By doing this, you keep all development and survival options open and you create a desire for one "sex" to seek the other "sex".....the "best" of the other sex as well....a very clever strategy.

You are at once a slimey creature on a planet in one of billions of the galaxies you created or "dreamed up" just as you are also the little girl down the street on planet earth or a dinosaur 200 million years ago.

Why is one of the most enduring entertainments we create for our own pleasure the play (and now the movie and virtual reality)? Could it be that we are literally acting out in our "microcosm" of Existence what really happens in Existence's "macrocosm"? I think our Mr. Shakespeare had his finger on the button....Right On The Button.

What about dice? We need some chance thrown in to spice things up. Well, there's plenty of that here on planet Earth....sometimes too much. If it hadn't been for that meteorite that slammed into the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago, we would not exist because we never could have competed with the very successful dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs had been around for about 165 million years and were doing very well, but couldn't survive the dust cloud thrown up by the meteorite impact that obliterated most of the sunlight, causing the herbevores' food supply to perish.

165 million years....that's going some. We have only been around for 2 million years as hominids, and only 200,000 years as Homo Sapiens and possibly 20,000 years as what we would call modern man. A spit in the ocean of time.

So, all the ingredients are there for a fascinating, interesting game on many levels, in many time periods on this planet. Multiply that by billions of other planets and other possibilities and you can see you are quite a games master! As the games evolve, they become so sophisticated they can interact with other games, learning more and more about the Universe and the nature of Existence. This process could go on indefinitely so that the products of Existence's imagination eventually become Existence Itself!

Not only have you, as Existence, created unlimited experiences and dramas for yourself, you have created memories of those experiences....just as when we spend a day skiing or playing a baseball game or shooting the rapids....we love to relive the experience and go over every nuance of it, savoring it and enjoying it again, so now you, as Experience, have memories of things you've done and experienced yourself, through all your little individual players, of which each of us are a part. The players (us) themselves have lived and gained these personal experiences and can enjoy them just as our "big" selves can.

In the Humanity on Earth game another way to look at this is to think of yourself as a leaf on a tree. Your physical and conscious self is a leaf. There's a "you" leaf, a "me" leaf and so on. The inner YOU is the whole tree because we are part of everything and everyone....a collective creation and wisdom. We are all connected to each other--to all of life--because we are all part of life. The tree is the whole universe and the force of life itself....the tree possesses every knowable thing and knows every knowable thing because it IS Existence. You are a direct consequence of the tree and you possess a direct pipeline to all of knowledge, fate, life, the past, the future....anything and everything.

Because the leaf--you--is only a leaf compared to the whole tree, it is very difficult for the mere leaf to comprehend the utter magnificence of the whole of the tree at once, but you can get glimpses of the wisdom and knowledge of the tree from time to time....usually in the dream state, which suspends the limits of the physical universe and sometimes in life from people you meet along the way or things that happen to you. Your inner self--the tree--will NEVER steer you in the wrong direction....it knows all about life and all about any possible future you may have....so anything it tells you, you MUST listen to. You get in trouble when you try to go against what the tree is telling you. It's very, very simple but you cannot go to the tree for an answer when you do not have the question.

When you can formulate the question of love you want to ask the tree, then the tree will give you the answer and make sure your leaf and other leaves from your part of the tree----from your "family" of souls, your "branch"---will find their way to you.

To go back to the chessboard analogy: if you are a knight, then you are kindred spirits with other knights, but not bishops or pawns, so that every piece on the board is at once an individual and yet part of Existence as well.

"All the world's a stage and men and women merely players."

More than anyone who has ever lived, I think Shakespeare said it all in that quote. Our lives are a play and we are the players with Earth as the stage.

Two more concepts to think about: 1) we grow ourselves and are in charge of our bodies and 2) we judge our performance at the end of each game or at the end of each play.

1) Since we are at once individuals, but also a direct and integral part of Existence, somewhere in our souls we know everything there is to know. It seems rational to me that when we are conceived, that we grow ourselves and manage our bodies all through our lives. Our souls are three-dimensional energy templates around which we form the physical building blocks of atoms to make ourselves....to give ourselves a vehicle through which our souls can operate in the physical world. Like building a racing car to climb into so you can go whizzing 'round the track.

2) Most religions include the concept of "judgement" at the end of life. That's a collective recognition of a feeling many of us have deep within us....the total knowledge of the tree creeping into our conscious minds.

If our "performance" in the current play is judged, what better judge than yourself? Existence doesn't judge you....Existence doesn't fool around with stuff like that, it has already given you everything you need to be a complete performer. And we don't pay attention to critics....what do they know? YOU are the actor and you know more about your performance and your expertise as an actor than anyone else does.....so who better to render a critical, possibly devastating judgement other than yourself?

The next play you're in you will have learned from your mistakes in the last one and won't make the same ones....but then that play will be a different one and you will "be" a different character (but still yourself.....just like the game Existence plays, microcosm again).

The more we learn, the better, more convincing and powerful actors we become.

We only learn from our mistakes or when things go wrong....when they go right, that takes care of itself.

We always marvel at a golfer when he makes a hole-in-one or holes an approach shot or a long putt.....but that's what he's trying to do every time! He's learning every time he swings that club and once in awhile it all comes together.

* * * * *

If Existence created Time, then it's pretty safe to assume that Existence (and each and every little piece of Existence---us---) can "manipulate" Time and step outside of it...bending the rules, so-to-speak.

But what does that mean? Well, it means lots of things; in fact it means just about everything you can think of because it impacts on the whole of physical existence---but in terms of this book it simply means (and this is The Loop): Your present is influenced by your future which is influenced by your present.

A major consequence of The Loop in our daily lives (and the answer to the questions posed at the beginning of all this) is The Loop's first law:

The degree of fascination you may have in a subject is directly proportional to the importance it plays in your future. Think about it.

What this means, essentially, is that powerful events in your future 'leak' back into your present and influence you in such a way that your consequent actions in the present help to make that future possible! A loop. THE Loop.

A child named Jimi or Eric who becomes fascinated with......the guitar, let's say, and then grows up to make that pursuit their life-long passion, has been exposed to the direct operation of The Loop. The guitar plays such an important role in their future lives, that this importance seeps back into their young present and telegraphs that importance to them, thereby fascinating them with this instrument; tantalizing them and driving them to get one and learn how to play it so they can fulfill their destiny. We are all subject to The Loop in our lives.

The Loop has two co-dependent properties: coincidence and sychronicity, which are also directly proportional to the power of The Loop. These familiar properties are the traces of The Loop in action. Watch out for them, because they are the tell-tale signs.

* it's actually spiralular (new word) but circular in nature....as a coiled-spring spiral viewed along its axis.

The phenomenon of coincidence is our clearest window into the workings of life, fate, and destiny and is a sure sign that you are on the right path. Coincidences are little (and sometimes not-so-little) reinforcing indicators that you are proceeding in the right direction through life. The most elegant definition I have ever heard of coincidence is: A coincidence is a miracle in which God wishes to remain anonymous. Don't overlook them....look them over when they arrive and think about where you are and what you are doing. If you pay attention to coincidences and follow where they lead you, you will increase the charm in your life and you will increase the frequency of coincidence to such a degree that your whole life will become an interactive series of Loops that all intertwine and coincide. You will reach a level of existence that will enable you to decipher the secrets of life and to know them and live in harmony with them (and to go on to other things more wonderful when it's over).

What are the secrets of life? Well....some of them are in this book, but you will have to decipher them yourself, and the rest are out there for you to discover when you are ready for them. They will all come your way when the time is right. The trick is to recognize them and that is what this book is about.

The Loop theory explained (this may seem like a lot of gibberish, but don't let it put you off; it's a doddle and will help you make real sense of the events in your life):

Firstly, The Loop has profound consequences for quantum mechanics because it is the root cause of the Uncertainty Principle. The Loop is the Unified Field Theory, but as it can never be measured or tested (as it exists outside Time and beyond dimensional physics) there can never be a testable, purely physical Unified Field Theory and that's what flummoxed Einstein. But that's another book and more. This book deals just with The Loop in action, something we have all experienced and can understand.

If Einstein's Theory of Relativity and the laws of quantum mechanics recognize the apparent paradox of the speed of light being constant whilst time is infinitely malleable (just the opposite of what our senses tell us of our physical experience), it could be argued that the whole of existence, past and future, exists independent of our viewpoint through our traveling window of time. This is not to say that the future is set and that we do not have free will; the realm of infinite possibilities could be an apparent paradox as well, too subtle or too magnificent for us to comprehend. But I think its possible to demonstrate how it could exist.

Consider Richard Bach's elegant example, in his book "Illusions," which likened one's life to a movie: a movie is a complete experience contained in reels of film which exist independent of time. In order to decipher the experience contained in those reels, the movie must be threaded through a projector (you) in the right sequence and time must be taken (your life) to view the film to experience it. You can't experience it by just picking up a reel and trying to somehow absorb what it contains (unless you know something no one else does!), it has to be shown, and you have to watch it. The one limitation in this wonderful example is that whatever is on the film is on the film, it can't be changed. If you believe in freedom of choice, all you can do is switch reels midstream, which will make you insane, or watch another movie, which requires another lifetime.

Regardless of your beliefs concerning life after death, we can all agree that we are all here NOW. So I'll deal with this lifetime and the two-way reverberation of The Loop.

Let's notch Richard Bach's intriguing idea up one step further, to that of the interactive experience. Suppose we have an experience with infinite choices and possibilities on a disc or other form of storage, similar to what state-of-the-art entertainment designers and programmers are developing at the moment. The disc can be picked up, examined and even sailed through the air, but you can't get at the experience in the disc without the right equipment and the time needed to "experience" that experience.

Again, the "right equipment" is you, and the "time needed" is your life.

Maybe the whole of existence is like one big interactive experience....it's all there already....all the infinite possibilities, but we have to "go through time" to experience them, and we are offered--and can make--choices at any time along the way. Instead of the static device of the movie, we have a dynamic device of the interactive which gives us freedom of choice within the Great Cosmic Gameplan. Any ten year old video game freak will understand this.

Here's your Disc of Life, go to it. You are the player and every choice we make affects every other choice everyone else makes and yet there is a cohesive unity to it all which binds us all together.

What has this got to do with the child who finds a particular subject or thing fascinating; or of falling in love at first sight?

If any possible future exists already, in whatever guise, then might it be possible that a powerful experience in that future would affect us so strongly that it might reverberate through time, like someone shaking a long water hose, into our present in some way? The young Eric or Jimi who becomes fascinated with a guitar, for instance, and grows up to make it their life's passion may have unconsciously "recognized" something deeply familiar when they first picked one up or heard one played, because it was so much a part of their future. The Loop.

The person who falls in love at first sight might "recognize" the person who will play such an important role in his or her future. That subtle "recognition" (sometimes not so subtle) we interpret as curiosity or fascination. The Loop.
The interactive future does not flow just one way, thus making The Loop a multi-dimensional, time-wrenching twist on the chicken-egg conundrum.

Again, The Loop comes into play whenever something new fascinates you or grabs your interest in a compelling fashion. It can be a person, a thing or a subject. This degree of fascination in a subject is directly proportional to the importance it plays in your future.

This book demonstrates by example The Loop in my life so far, thereby reflecting the effect itself in action so you can then recognize in your own life. How you build on it requires more searching and growth on your part, but this could be a start for you.

Recognition is the key to opening your life to its truly infinite possibilities, and in order to be able to recognize the signals that nature offers you in your peripheral vision it's helpful to have experienced those signals first or even second hand. Hence this book.

It's one thing to recognize an effect and postulate a theory about it as I have done, yet quite another to explain how and why it works, but I've had a few glimpses which have come from that part of me (and you) which I rely on for my ideas, so I feel pretty confident about them. I've trusted what I've found there (I'll call it The Source) as my paintings reflect. I have before me a piece of paper I scribbled on in a mad flurry back in 1988 while I was working on a simple film trailer title (either Delta Force or Die Hard, oddly enough...not exactly spiritually stimulating films or artistically clever titles). A few pure thoughts came winging in that seemed worth a second look. I will quote them here verbatim:

1) "Life is an endemic part of the Universe and in fact is the prime mover--a closed loop effect."

2) "Creation may be self-fulfilling--the ultimate experiment of progressive intelligent life."

3) "The Universe educates itself through a process of development until its creations can understand its fundamental mechanisms in order to re-create them. Life cannot be a by-product of the Universe."

The last may seem to contradict the first two, but we are dealing with a dynamic each-way situation, so it really doesn't. The Loop effect. In the case of the above, I didn't sit and think about what I was writing, I just wrote it down and then thought about it. I was just a conduit, as when I am coming up with ideas for my paintings or trying to solve a design problem (if I'm lucky). The above are very simplistic ideas (always the best ones) and I am bothered by them to the extent they seem to focus on human life only....I do not feel comfortable separating us so markedly from the rest of Life. I certainly wouldn't entrust the explanation of the Universe to a cat, but I think it's arrogant in the extreme to separate ourselves from the rest of Life. A flower is every bit a miracle as a baby. But, these little thoughts were a starting point for trying to make sense of what's all around us and how it affects our perception and our daily lives.

The obverse of an event is the same as the event itself because they are tied together and can change places or be in two places at once---the Mobius Syndrome---make a mobius strip by taking a long length of paper (1 inch x 8 inches, for instance) and loop it together (!) and stick one end to the other like a daisy chain---only JUST before you stick it together, give one end a half twist and THEN stick it together. What you end up with is a mobius--a two dimensional plane upon which if you draw a continuous line along its length, you will end up drawing on both sides of the plane without lifting the drawing tool or traversing from one side of the plane to the other. A seeming impossibility, but possible, nonetheless.

I hadn't tried to formulate or develop these concepts any further until I finished this book and realized that the reason for writing it was that there is an almost predictable phenomenon running through the events in my life which then became the motivation for writing the book in the first place (you can see I like circles). My original working title was "The Right Place at the Right Time," so the germ was there. This book doesn't analyze these events, it just presents them. It is an example of The Loop in operation, if you will. Draw your own conclusions from your own experience, but I think you'll find something very familiar in what you are about to read. Maybe this can be your first step on the path to greater awareness and realization for you in your life. I think there is a lot to be said for being open to "recognize" those little and not-so-little cosmic signals and signs that whizz past us or twinkle in the distance and then are gone.

Whenever I get on a plane (the other kind) to fly from one continent to another it seems I have always bought a book at the news stand in the airport which somehow relates to either where I'm going, or where I have just been. It's almost spoooky (as Dame Edna would say), because it always happens, yet this aspect never crosses my mind while I'm selecting a book, but only when I start reading it. I'm sure if I thought about this phenomenon while I was deciding on which book to buy that it would cease to operate. Nature never allows us a direct look at her most intimate bits and pieces....oblique glimpses only through swirling fans of uncertainty which makes her the supreme femme fatale. She drives the physicists nuts.

When I flew around the world from Los Angeles going west in the early 70s, I bought two science fiction books. I started to read one in Japan, but couldn't get into it, so I picked up the other one. It took place around the Acropolis, just where I was headed. I finished the story the morning I woke up in my hotel room staring head on at the Parthenon out of my window (neat). I then took a 24 hour boat ride to Istanbul and read the second book on the boat. It turned out to be centered around Istanbul. A sci-fi novel based in Istanbul! This happens all the time.

Regularly, thoughts of a friend will pop into my head and then they'll telephone, or I will call someone and they will say they were just thinking of me...we've all experienced that. The Loop.

The phenomena of deja vu is another facet of the Loop effect.

My good friend, Gary Brooker ("Whiter Shade of Pale"), after reading part of this manuscript said to me very, VERY seriously, "Paul, have you ever heard of 'vuja de?'

"No," I said, "I haven't. What is it?"

Gary came back with (even more seriously), "That's when you have this profound feeling that you've...you've.... never done this before!"

As I've been writing this book, you will witness that too many "coincidences" relating to just what I happen to be writing at the time have occurred. In fact, these very words are written after I have finished the book, and just as I sat down to write them, a program came on the box that talked about the laws of physics possibly having to be rewritten because there is a good case that Consciousness rules the Universe...something I feel as a deeply natural and sensible organization of physics, as exemplified by the three snippets above. This kind of synchronicity runs through my life on almost a daily basis. Is the reason this seems to constantly occur a bludgeoning over the head to recognize the obvious and write all this?

A religious person has no problem with this concept at all, because God is the Creator and That is That. But I am not religious or prone to need to believe in anything. I don't at all mind being mystified; yet I cannot help but feel, especially as my whole existence is wrapped up in the creative process, that Life is not a by-product of the Universe, but that they are one and the same thing, inseparable. Life needs the Universe in order to express itself. Quantum physical phenomena do not stand on their own and will never be explained adequately without Life being brought into the equation, of that I am convinced somewhere down in my bones.

We create ourselves. All of Life does, and the Universe was created by and provides the means through which Existence can express itself (Life). I can't prove this or back this up with anything but personal observation and gut feeling, but this view of the Universe does answer all the unanswerable questions of What It All Means and How It All Works. But then, so do most religions. I just don't buy the religious argument; it doesn't feel right to me. I think the Shinto religion and most of the North American Indian cultures were much closer to the underlying truth, recognizing how nature works her wonders by observing her closely.

Because this way of looking at things is necessarily non-linear, it's very difficult to discuss it in understandable, linear physical terms, but very simplisticly: As the products of existence (Life) increase their understanding of their origin and the Universe around them, they will finally be able to comprehend and manipulate Existence on the physical level to the degree they will gradually become an interlocking part of it....a bit like gears meshing or DNA spirals combining.

All of existence is subject to The Loop effect, and there are Loops within Loops that connect everything to everything else across space-time without being hindered by the speed of light. Strong Loops, weak Loops and everything-in-between Loops. The Loop plays a critical role in our procession through life, from strictly personal regards to fundamental Universal ones.

Maybe I became an artist because art has played such an important part in my life.

My son was born through circumstances that stretch belief, as you will find. He created the conditions for his existence to such a degree that the coincidence involved stretches credibility to nonsensical proportions. I still find it hard to believe and you will, too. All my friends certainly do.

Have a look at your own life in the context of the above and what you are about to read and consider what you find. You'll never look at life the same way again, and it will never look at you the same way, either.

Wherever you find coincidence or synchronicity, you can be sure the Loop is in operation.

See if you can detect the Loop in action throughout this book. The mere fact that you are reading this now means The Loop is already in play....

Remember: your present is influenced by your future which is influenced by your present.