Welcome to my head. This is my home, my soul, my universe. I don’t know many of you very well, and you might not know me. You see, I feel slightly disconnected from the world. It’s as if there is some ethereal figure sitting on my brain stem and watching everything I feel and do. It calmly observes me as I get annoyed, upset, happy, or embarrassed.

I had a dream once where my dream-self was getting clobbered. The observer of the dream, myself, forcefully changed the dream world until my dream-self came out okay. I haven’t been able to do that in the real world yet, but you never know.

You see, this world is indistinguishable from a dream. When the second Matrix movie came out, I had this great theory for how the trilogy would end: the so-called ‘real world’ that Neo had escaped to was actually just another level of the Matrix. Who could tell where the Matrix ended and the truly real world began? My philosophy is that you have to just accept yourself as you are, and be content to live your life knowing that you can never know or do everything. If I am in a dream, or in the Matrix, will escaping to reality change who I am?

When Richard Feynman was dying of cancer, days before a risky surgery which could potentially end his life, he stayed up late working on a physics problem with a colleague. This was not a particularly important problem. It’s solution wouldn’t reveal any fundamental truth about reality. Yet he was so comfortable with his life that he did not spend his final days seeking a higher truth. He spent them doing what he loved to do. Feynman lived in the moment, and that is the highest goal any human can achieve.

I do not believe in progress. The human world is a constant battle between conflicting points of view, and nothing will ever change that. Our lives are small and finite, and our understanding is so severely limited that we are constantly alone. The glue that binds us together is the belief that there is something that unites us. Some call it God, a complement to humanity: as great as we are small and as infinite as we are finite. I do not call it anything in particular - maybe the Tao - but I do believe that this glue exists. It may not actually extend beyond humanity, but it helps us live in the world. And that’s enough for me.

I try to explain this to my parents, but my mom just laughs at me. My dad is more amenable to debate - but also he’s a physicist, and although Eastern religions fascinate him, he’s too Cartesian to believe in spirituality. If you can’t prove it scientifically, he won’t ever really believe it. I was once like him. Until recently, I was a pure scientist. I didn’t believe in God and I laughed at those who did!

Fortunately, I have an overactive imagination. I am constantly preparing myself for a supernatural adventure. Perhaps that door will lead to Neverwhere. Maybe my wardrobe opens into Narnia. I might need to know how to fight with a sword and be willing to learn magic. I’ll have to be self-sufficient, and my mind has to be ready for anything. Maybe that’s why I’ve never really accepted this world - I’m still waiting for my letter from Hogwart’s.

There’s something inside of me that can exist in any world, real or fantasy. I can’t look into anyone else’s consciousness. I know I’m finite and distinct, even though at the same time I know I am connected to everything else. I don’t believe in true distinctness. Not even moral distinctness. Perhaps there are finite rules to the universe, finite values and laws, but I don’t think anyone can ever know them. As soon as you have an answer, I have ten more questions. I value the good questions much more than the good answers. And if there is something greater than myself and everything I can possibly understand, who’s to say it’s not the Tao? … or Brahman? … or God?

A Buddhist monk once told me this: there are big buddhas as huge as the universe, and human-sized buddhas that walk the earth, and tiny buddhas the size of atoms. I learned two important lessons from his sermon: first, that the infinite is not just very large, but also very small; second, that you can never get a straight answer from a Buddhist monk.

I believe in that little figure sitting in my brain. I go around in life, picking away fervently in my search for truth, while he watches with a mild curiosity. The Sarah that many of you probably don’t know very well doesn’t even know this little figure inside her own head. But he’s good company, through thick and thin, through one world and all the others. Maybe he’s my soul or my psyche, my consciousness or my waking mind. But most probably he’s just myself, and that’s all I can really believe in.