The realization of Radical Inclusivity is the recognition that you are already inside (although what inside means can shift with context and circumstance) and there is no way out. It is the ultimate endgame that points to the indisputable fact that there is no outside to reality.
My experience of Radical Inclusivity lead me to an extraordinary and paradoxical realization that there is a part of me that is always aware even if I am not aware of it.
Let’s take a moment to examine the weirdness of that realization. There is a part of me that is always aware – even if I am not aware of it. The paradox here is that I seem to be able to be aware and not aware at the same time; or that there are in fact two of me, one that is always aware and one that is sometimes not aware of that.
I claim that the experiences of Radical Inclusivity will always – at least for the foreseeable future – include some level of paradox because these experiences actually exist in a different level of consciousness. Our minds are currently running in an operating system that we could call dualistic thinking, which distinguishes things in terms of pairs of opposites – this/that, here/there, now/then, inside/outside.
Our experiences of Radical Inclusivity are paradoxical in nature because they actually exist in a new level of consciousness. When we are in the middle of them they don’t feel paradoxical at all. They seem normal and obvious like the back of your hand. Later, when we have returned to our normal level of consciousness and think back about the experience of Radical Inclusivity from there, it becomes paradoxical. That is because what had seemed normal and obvious when we were experiencing it, now looks impossible.
These jumps in consciousness resemble the hyperspace jumps I loved in science fiction as a child. You start out in one spot in the universe and then hit the hyper drive, and boom, you are on the other side of the universe. In even more exciting variations of the theme you actually end up in a new universe, one that occupies a space and time stream different from the universe you came from.
The metaphor of hyperspace is a good one to help us understand radical inclusivity. These experiences of the infinite inside of reality happen in a different universe, or if you will, a different dimension of reality.
Edwin Abbot’s 1884 novel Flatland still gives one of the most accessible and profound explications of inter-dimensional travel. One characteristic of this kind of travel is that it happens spontaneously, without an elapsing of time or any traversing of space. You were in one place and then you were in another. And the new place you end up in, especially if it is not just a different location in your universe, but a different universe all together, can be very weird.
The structure of matter and life could be completely different. The laws of time, space and causality might not be the same. There is simply no way to know what you will find in a new universe and no way to be sure that your mind, conditioned by the reality of one universe, will be useful at all in understanding anything in the new one. This can make things very weird.
Our trips into the new universe of Radical Inclusivity are similar. They exist in a different reality, a different consciousness from the one that our minds have been trained in. We travel into these experiences instantaneously and spontaneously with no time elapsing and no space being traversed. We were simply in one consciousness and then found ourselves in another. The return trip, assuming we make one, is the same. You were there and now you are back here. Often the shift is so subtle that we don’t realize we are there, or have returned back for quite some time.
Of course every way that I attempt to describe Radical Inclusivity in writing will be subject to the problem that I have to do it with the language of our current level of consciousness. That means I cannot ultimately capture it. The Romantic writers of the late 18th century were aware of the problem of describing other dimensions of consciousness. Many of them used opium as their hyperdrive into new realms of being. Thomas de Quincy for instance spent Saturday nights with an opium soaked rag in his pocket that he would suck on before entering an opera, concert or play so that he could watch from the vantage point of an alternate consciousness.
I have learned that when trying to describe the ineffable the liberal use of metaphor and analogy is required. These nonliteral means of communication allow us to point to new realms of consciousness while avoiding getting stuck in literal interpretation.
Realizing that words are unable to capture the experience of journeys into new consciousness, the Romantics believed that the abstract nature of music made it the best medium for chronicling these journeys. If words were to be used at all, poetry was the form that allowed for enough ambiguity of meaning to allow us to point towards the truly novel nature of the new consciousness without getting stuck in literalness.
Radical Inclusivity is an experience of non-dual consciousness that occurs with the collapse of the duality between inside and outside. It is a hyper-drive that can take us from this universe to another. It happens instantaneously with no time having elapsed and no space having been traversed.