"YOU MEAN HE REALLY doesn't care one way or the other?"

"If he does, he isn't saying. The point is, he cares more that you be the one to decide. He's got this thing about free will."

"But what if I decide wrong?"

"He said you would ask that. And he was very specific. I'm to tell you that you can't decide wrongly, as long as you really decide. Your decision, if it's really yours, will be the right one."

"But I know even less than I thought I did... About all this, I mean. How am I supposed to even think about it?"

"I'll tell you two stories. I could tell you a thousand, but I'll only tell two. They're both extremes, both possible but unlikely."

His wings settled slowly to his back. [read more]

"SAM."

The voice—not really a voice—came as through a fog, the remnants of the pain, the antiseptic odors of rubber and alcohol and bedsheets and sweat, drifting silently away.

"Can you hear me, Sam?"

She wasn't conscious. She knew that. But she was fairly sure this wasn't just a dream.

She made an effort.

"Who are you?"

"Don't be afraid."

There was a rustle of feathers and a great amount of light.

Sam's mind cleared somewhat, though she was still not certain where she was.

"An angel? You seem like an angel."

"You see wings, and feathers, yes? I'm wearing white?"

"A robe."

"Well, you're Catholic, you see... Close enough, anyway."

"But why..."

"We need your help. There's a decision to be made."

Her head was much clearer, now.

"A decision. Who's we?" [read more]

We live in two worlds: the interior, spiritual, world of pain and colors and emotion and smells and heat and cold—all the stuff our experience is made of—and the exterior world of cats and coffee mugs and other people and atoms and electrons and bananas.

But those cats, and those other people, in the external world are just bodies. Our external view of them provides no direct evidence of their interior lives.

My son has recently purchased a Pleo Dinosaur—a robotic pet run by an artificial intelligence program. [read more]

To subscribers to the Daily Mull Newsletter:

If you've been wondering why there have been no new posts in the last two weeks come to the site and take a look around.

I've been doing a bit of redecorating, while working on some of the coding to improve the site's functionality, and implementing some improved security.

There's a new look for the site as a whole: a little more streamlined and a little less formal. And it now displays correctly on Internet Explorer.

When you go to an individual post, you will see the quote of the day (the day it was originally posted) there as well.

At the end of each individual post there's a list of related posts and quotes. (Well, for some—eventually it will be for all of them.)

The forwarding function ("email this page") now works again, and the "read more" link now works, as well. [read more]

NOW WE ARE CLOSE to the heart of the matter.

We humans live a sort of double life, involving two different kinds of knowledge and experience, every moment of every day.

The scientist who stares at a brain scan and says, "There. That area lighting up—that's a pain in his elbow," is, at that moment, making a connection between those two worlds.

He is saying that he believes that the outward, public event on the screen before him is an indication of an inner, private event in the consciousness of the person being scanned.

He's probably right, but that doesn't change the fact that the two events are of completely different kinds—a difference which is fundamental to our entire sense of meaning in life.

There's a lot to be said about this difference, but the first thing to note is that none of us care, in the least, about the external event. [read more]

WE ALL LIVE in virtual bodies.

The pain in my elbow is really in my brain. The sensation you get when you rub two fingers together is really in your brain, not in your fingers.

In a sense, we're operating our bodies by remote control from a command center in the middle of our head, and only seeing or feeling the world and our bodies through the monitors and earphones up there—which have already filtered, interpreted—and even distorted—the input.

Much of what our brains do with the information the nerves bring in from various parts of our body can be understood mechanically.

That is, although we don't have the whole picture yet, much of what we call "thinking" or "experiencing" can be explained, in principle, from the outside. [read more]

SO WHAT DOES the pain in my leg have to do with knowledge and experience generally, and with the whole idea of spirituality?

Back to those phantom limbs, for a moment.

Almost always, when someone has lost an arm or a leg, they will continue to feel it, often painfully, for some time as though it is really still there. (If you're interested in this strange phenomenon, you can read more about it, and a great many other fascinating things in Phantoms in the Brain.)

All of these feelings, the pain, the sense of the arm's position and motion, sometimes even a sense of touch, are completely in the brain, since there is no arm or leg present.

It can take some time for these sensations to fade, and sometimes they don't. [read more]

I'VE HAD A SORE ELBOW for the past week or so.

I have no idea when or where I hurt it, or how long it will take to heal—except that it is taking too long. I just know that whenever I move it in the wrong way, it hurts: a kind of deep ache which is very unpleasant.

I don't bring this up to ask for your sympathy, though I appreciate any that comes my way.

I bring it up because it gets to the heart of the whole idea of a natural spirituality.

This ache, this pain, is not really in my elbow.

On one hand, it's quite possible for people to feel pain in limbs that have been amputated. On the other hand, we are all pretty sure that an amputated arm, from the time it is no longer attached to a body, does not feel anything at all. [read more]