…the causes of our behavior are so complex that we can\’t trace them back. If you\’ve got one line of dominoes knocking each other down one by one, then you can always say, Look this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of dominoes that can be traced back in an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the causal chain begins.

… We’re free, because we always existed. Right back from the beginning of time, only there was no beginning of time so we existed all along. Nothing ever caused us. Nothing ever made us. We simply are, and we always were… our bodies, the whole world around us, they’re like the holographic display. They’re real enough, but they don\’t show the true cause of things. It\’s the one things we can never be sure of just looking at the display of the universe – why things are happening. But behind it all, inside it all, if we could see through it, we\’d find the true cause of everything.

Philotes (Philotes are the fundamental building blocks of all matter & energy. Philotes have neither mass nor inertia. Philotes have only location, duration & connection… it was philotic connections – the twining of philotic rays – that… allow instantaneous communication… many light years apart [57]) that always existed, doing what they want… The supposed beginning of the universe, that was only the start of the present order – this display, all of what we think exists. But who says the philotes that are acting out the natural laws that began at that moment didn’t exist before? And if the whole universe collapses back in on itself, who says that the philotes won\’t simply be released from the laws they’re following now, and go back into chaos. Darkness. Disorder. Whatever they were before this universe brought them together. Why couldn’t they – we – have always existed and always continue to exist? [387]