244 A Programmer’s Guide to the Mind
and other objects or situations which people have constructed by putting
together the Lego blocks of raw Mercy experience.
Internal visions of possibility are rooted in Perceiver belief:
Mercy experiences are connected together by Perceiver facts.
Perceiver thinking can manipulate these facts.
Perceiver belief in these new facts will rearrange Mercy memories.
The result is an internal Mercy picture of something new and different.When Perceiver strategy believes in a certain fact, it is deciding to place
confidence in a specific way of connecting these Lego blocks. If I come up
with a way of connecting experiences which is novel, then I can turn this
new idea into an actual object by putting real bits of material together in
this new way. We see the fruit of this mental labor when we go to the store
and notice some clever gadget which combines existing ideas in a novel
manner. We see it, slap our heads with our hands and say, “Why didn‟t I
think of that. It‟s so obvious. You just take a bit of this and put it together
with a chunk of that and...voila!” Someone believed in a new Perceiver
connection and turned it into reality. Why was his leap of faith successful?
Because it was based in the Perceiver rules and logic of common sense,
which in turn are rooted in the real world; he took what he saw and knew,
and rearranged it, and this new arrangement could be imposed upon reality.
But what does a new combination can-opener and back-scratcher have
to do with visions of „heaven‟ and „hell‟? A lot, because it is the same
mind which is generating them both. In each case, a vision of new and
improved existence is (hopefully) being transformed into reality. The only
difference is that the corner store gives us better gadgets and services while
images of „heaven‟ and „paradise‟ promise us a new me along with a better
body. In other words, one comes to us with better objects, while the other
improves me. But, we know that me and object recognition use exactly the
same mental circuitry—they both exploit interaction between Perceiver
and Mercy thought. Me is built within the internal world of Perceiver and
Mercy thinking, whereas object recognition occurs within automatic
thought. Therefore, the principles which apply in one area should also be
true in the other.
If this is correct, then I suggest that the following principles can guide
us in creating visions of „heaven‟ to which we can leap with at least
reasonable confidence that we will land upon solid ground.
First, I suggest that a „heaven‟ has to be based upon Perceiver logic,
confidence, and common sense. This is because it is Perceiver confidence
and common sense which allow us to create the order of „Germany‟; it is
only by working with these „bricks‟ that we can build a „heaven.‟ In
contrast, if we work with the frozen mud of emotional 'facts,' we will end
up inevitably with the chaos of „Russia.‟ No matter how beautiful our