Z.D.

Taken from object #4

The Once Ones seem to acknowledge only a single core belief: “The Teaching of the Decaying One”. Due to circumstances, we have been able to recover scant record of this. The gist is noted below.

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Evolution… we have it backwards.

We began as one, as the One True Being manifested as physical reality. The very nature of this physical dimension means that dissolution begins right away. From one whole to two halves and so on until we end up where we now find ourselves.
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This concept sheds light on many of their practices, but not all. For example; it explains why those presumably closer to modern society choose to still not make contact.

Since Project GroundBreaker, a rift has formed, splitting the core of the once ones into two distinct sides. One remains adamant that any further splitting will only take humanity away from the True State.

The other side has taken a different view.

This other side argues that something external is blocking the way. While this new faction concedes that the aim is indeed to reach the True State, their additional belief brings severe implications.


They claim to have made contact with one of the defectors they call “the externals”. One account tells, in deep detail, of meeting one that “has the appearance of what had been halved”. The descriptions range in detail, but a consistent point seems to be recognition; something vital is recognized in the face of this other.

Friction begins. The account tells of being “handled and viewed through distorting devices”.

The eldest member of the tribe tells the story of his*[her?] arrival.

People believe far more than they can understand.

And later a small select few began working together, and this became known as The Localizers. They actively hunted and trapped TOOs.

Many of them are faint flickers at first. When woken from deep and dreamless sleep, mother would often mumble whole but strange sentences. This baffled me for a long time because if she wasn’t dreaming, she shouldn’t have been in the middle of any conversation. I concluded that maybe the dream classification had been oversimplified and thought little of it.

The Missing Stage mentioned by Duncan Carver seemed to fit as the missing piece; In the same way that one might be alone in a room of their own, locked at times but sometimes not, this is the natural state of general dreams. But the deeper layers are more akin to the wider house, then the yard, until finally one is completely outdoors. Carver postulates that this missing stage was at one time not missing at all, but a common part of the sleep cycle. He cites an inhuman list of sources whose ability to communicate nonverbally staggers the modern imagination. His theory states that at one point in time, human beings had this now missing stage somewhere most likely after the second REM stage. It operated exactly like the rest of the stages.

Most people do not remember their dreams with any great regularity. It takes practices such as dream journalling and active memory exercises in order to strengthen dream recall, and even experienced lucid dreamers report that unless they specifically place the intention, it is possible to not become lucid during any dream.

Carver’s theory is that the other side of the mind, known mostly as the Unconscious but that Carver calls the Flip-Conscious, operates simultaneously and unseen. He views consciousness less like a point and more like a circle; a spotlight designating what the observing self sees. Thus, during a lucid dream, you are conscious in that the spotlight is showing the ego the dreamscape.

So, goes the theory, either after dreaming and before deep dreamless sleep you would enter this other stage. The purpose of this stage, he speculated, was to brush away any residual social tension that might have remained from the rest of the day.

(Note: Carver assumes the function of dreams in general to be a “kind of literal brain wash, a cleansing of the mind through agitation, much as the more filthy the water becomes as you wash clothing, the cleaner the clothing will be once it dries.”)

This Social Stage, then, was not a shared dream stage in which conscious minds were meant to play together. The whole point, according to Carver, was to allow tension and conflict to resolve peacefully and naturally in a way that uses the least amount of universal resources possible.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

The insomniac moments between dreams, the unconsciously shared dream state, the accurate but theoretically heretical/impossible information gained during sleep all seem to point to one idea.

If something external is blocking the way, as the other side claims, could it be that this is on purpose? The sharing of dreams breaks many rules long held dear. Could it be that

The law of least energy/energy conservation makes sense. If belief powers these doorways*…. disbelief is belief in the negative of any given thing. If the level is neutral, then nothing happens. But if disbelief is high, the doorway would be negated. This would then have the cascading effect of “proving” the nonexistence of the doorway, thus strengthening the trust in both the initial belief and the new belief that the inital belief not only is now but had always been correct, and so on. This then easily spreads outward, affecting all areas of the mind until finally the mind is filled with the belief that belief and knowing and understanding and truth and reality are all the same singular thing and that only the objective, tangible world exists. Blinded by its invisible self, collapse.

If this is all true, then Sati’s idea clarifies itself radically. The initial crack in the core could have been a minor accident.

Unity is thwarted by the splintering of this single core self masked as actually bringing all people together. They sell it as “the strengthening of the ego in order to transcend it” because “you cannot transcend what you don’t have in the first place”. It is sold through shortcuts made to save modern time- but what is it saving time from? Only itself. Save time by spending less of it so you can save more time on other things by spending less on those too. Widen your reach by making it shallower. Life is short, don’t waste it on what you can’t see. Simple. Effective.

All of which make Mehi’s prediction so striking.

How are the Once Ones to fight such an ending? How can they possibly combat an army consisting of unwitting armies all splintered and unknowing what they are in?

There are too many of them, and too little of Us.

Although I think that I might have an idea that could work.

They feed on conflict, separation…