When I say that endings exist before their beginnings are even started I mean it in a fairly extravagant sense. I expect you'll find this proposition not particularly surprising in an abstract sense such as when an observer has the foresight to see the outcome of a volatile situation, but I mean it quite literally.

In terms of validating this position the two anecdotes I quoted from my personal experience may not impress you because of their lack of objectivity, but the names and birth dates of members of my family are a matter of public record so there is no room to doubt their veracity. My father spoke very little about his colourful background because I suspect he knew very little about it, but with the digital transcription of historical birth and census data my brother and I have been able to put the pieces of our family story together. I may be the only one in my family to interpret its significance in the way I've been telling you, but I'm sure its coincidence with the host model will persuade you to interpret it just as I do.

But as evidence of the presumptive simultaneity of beginnings and endings, the pattern among my family's names and birth dates is dwarfed by the shape of Italy and its formidable antiquity spanning several million years of geologic morphology. Unlike the other bits of evidence I have been showing you, the shape of Italy provides us with an inference which we can be very sure of, and that is that a human model existed before its geo-forming had begun.

To further pursue the extravagance of this thinking I suggest that not only was there an existing human model way back in the early Pliocene, but that at this time, all human society had more or less completed its long evolution up to the troubles we see around us. In this case I suggest that a new theory about the nature and organisation of matter is now required, one which involves the somewhat mysterious conflict between the waking and dreaming bodies.

I mentioned in my previous work how an implication of the infinite regression leads unequivocally to the conclusion that the body represents a map of the entire universe, but I failed to provide you with a couple of further details. These follow on from the implication that the body must therefore depict the two ends of time, the beginning of time and its end. The beginning of time is most graphically depicted by the heart which beats at the centre of the circulatory system. It depicts the original big bang on a relatively diminutive scale, while the blood, which permeates every organ equally, represents the cosmic microwave background radiation which arrives on our shores from every direction.

But as graphic as the heart may be in terms of a depiction of the beginning of time there is another organ in the body which is even more primitive. It happens to be displaced from the centre of the body by a considerable distance, but it is so relatively primitive that it depicts the beginning of time even more graphically than the heart. This organ is located in the pelvic region of the body and includes the anus which represents a primitive event horizon, and the generative organs which depict the initial act of creation.

Contrary to these depictions the centre of the brain has relatively little to do with such beginnings, but has a much more sophisticated nature, and as such adequately portrays the ultimate goal of creation, namely the representation of the entire organism in terms of the satisfaction of its needs and desires. In this case the structure and function of the brain depict the final chapter of an organism's experience of this dimension, and between a creature's head and tail the dreaming of all time proceeds in spite of whether or not it goes to the trouble of observing this.

Whichever way you look at it space and time are bound by infinities in which the infinitely diminutive is as incomprehensible as the infinitely voluminous. Strictly speaking, there is no beginning to space or time just as there is no end to them, so where you define the beginning and end of these dimensions is entirely up to you, and those with whom you discuss such things.

While the contrary nature of a body's head and tail may be an easy thing for you to relate to, their role in the depiction of the two ends of time is fraught with drama and consequence. The physical body and the dream body are at odds with each other with respect to what they do with the two ends of time. While the physical body struggles to keep them separate and from ever meeting, the dream body joins them to each other so that all points within the continuum of time are accessible to the body's feeling and dreaming. In terms of your experience their conflicting aspirations may be too obscure for you to take very seriously, but it nevertheless remains the case that their respective relationships with time are very different.

This may not sound particularly true in your case. You have to remember though, that the sort of dreaming I've been talking about here is not limited to the shady and easily forgotten sequences we experience while asleep each night, but the feelings which a dreamer incorporates in his or her daily life. In my experience as a solitary human being I am able to recognise the accompaniment of my dreaming, where we share feelings spanning the ages on a continuous and daily basis.

If you are unable to sense the activity of the dream body in your life then an observation of the following analogy may be helpful. The resemblance between the topographical configuration of planet Earth and a nominal four legged animal may be likened to a harmonic relationship such as that between octaves in the case of musical scales. Both planetary and human bodies resonate in sympathy with each other in spite of the differences between their historical epochs. Together we are one planetary being able to reach out across the ages in spite of how absurd this proposition may presently seem to you.

Now, this may not sound as extravagant to you, but there was a time long ago when I was a youth, I was very deeply immersed in the feeling that my dreaming was always awake in my waking life, and that everyone around me was only dreaming that they were with me when we met.

I had been smoking a little cannabis during the several years prior to this episode, but my use of this substance was dwarfed by the ghostly presence it exposed me to. This presence accompanied my discovery of the host model of Earth, and I became more and more deeply immersed in the feeling as I began to develop its many devastating implications.

It felt like everyone here on planet Earth was dreaming that they were living in a vast galactic empire. I was driving the night shift in a taxi at the time, so I saw a lot of Sydney in the twilight and overnight, and all across the city and suburbs the lights looked like they were an extension of the starry sky. If there was one outstanding feature with respect to my acquaintance with the host model, then it would have to be the staggering depth of time and space it opened up to me. I'll never forget what that was like because it was the most beautiful thing I've ever felt.

My immersion in this feeling spanned many years up until I made up my mind to consciously break from it. I was doing a lot of walking throughout this time and I eventually became exhausted. One of my favourite glimpses of this feeling I got by walking between country towns overnight. The nights were filled with chaotic hallucinations, but arriving at the edge of town at dawn felt like I was a far away cosmic voyager, returning to the galactic periphery. It was a particularly deep cosmic connection I was able to enjoy at this time.

You may struggle to relate to some of my experiences, but keep in mind the rapport which occurs between the dreaming and waking bodies when the waking body goes to the trouble of observing its many subtle feelings. If you're familiar with my work then some objective evidence of this will be the correlation between people's spontaneous behaviour and their role within the host model. You should also not underestimate the ability of cannabis to draw your attention to such feelings, since both your waking and dreaming bodies will have an interest in each other in spite of whether or not you consciously permit it.

The conclusion I presume to draw from this is that it's not particularly uncommon for individuals here on Earth to be connected to disparate segments of time so that answers to problems arising in the development of Earth history may be found before more drastic measures become necessary. Just as all of us here in this day and age have a distinctly Pliocene connection, as the shape of Italy requires, then we are no less connected to a vision of some grand cosmic future. Each of us, wherever we are in time, may transcend our location in history by learning how to tune in to our subtle feelings and dreaming.

Now, I have one more thing for you to consider before I bring this chapter to a close, and it concerns perhaps the most significant feature of the shape of Italy which is its fundamentally symbolic nature. It is however, far from being the only symbolic feature of planetary topography with others such as the British Isles, the Antilles archipelago, and the islands of the Pacific being typical examples. Indeed, I've been calling the infinite regression one of abstractions purely because the manifestation of life on every scale of existence is ultimately symbolic!

And the thing about putting symbols together in large numbers, as has been the case with the evolution of life on this planet, is that right from the very beginning the courtship of matter occurs in the context of stories. In terms of the planetary story I'm telling you here the particular feature I want to draw your attention to is that such stories embody records, so that the entire planet consists of a recording of its cosmic experience.

Now, I'm going to draw an analogy between the planetary recording of experience and the recording of human stories in forms such as books or movies or such things, because I believe that the present discussion validates it. I believe that the planetary record is not unlike a book in terms of each of them being deliberately constructed for the purpose of establishing a permanent record. In the case of books, each and every passage in the story doesn't cease to exist just because the reader has finished reading it. A new reader can pick up the book and begin reading it from any indiscriminate point, or a reader can go back and reread earlier passages without the record being compromised in any way. The recording exists independently of any particular observation of it, but more importantly any part of the recording can be accessed at random, so that, in the case of the planetary recording, the history of that particular point in time may then proceed to unfold.

What I'm suggesting is that any one of us could have been born from some very old dreaming. There can be no doubt that all of us will have come from dreaming of some age or other, and I suspect that it will be much older than people believe it to be because the fringes of consciousness are so difficult to define. Were it not for the tangle of social agreements which define your reality, you could be anywhere in time and you wouldn't even know it, because it would seem to be quite normal to you. In my own case the world I live in now is so dramatically different from the world I remember dreaming of as an infant, that I feel compelled to attempt a reconciliation of the discrepancy.

I suggest that the feelings of each and every one of us are subject to a negotiation with the dreaming of our cosmic ancestor, who is motivated by the desire to achieve its own cosmic goals, and who has access to a vast pool of time with which to manipulate us.