Okay, where do I start?

Where do I suggest that you start? Let me see now. Where are you likely to be. What would be a reasonable and achievable first step? I need to give this some thought. I'm familiar with the worldview that I've constructed, but you're not like to be.

Maybe a mind experiment to kick off with, hm?

‘Start from the start’ puts me in mind of what was probably my first mind experiment. I was a child at the time, and very young. The experiment involved, aptly enough, my own origin.

I would think back and try to retrieve my first memories. Imagine doing that at the age of four, or maybe even three. I’d worm my way into the foggy past. I remembered Easter at my uncle’s home—where we lived until I was four. I met up again with my grandparents who had sailed to visit from the other side of the world. There was a doctor’s house call and the indignity of being injected in the butt. The time that I ate snow and vomited my breakfast, putting me off cornflakes for life. The time I caught my big toe in the spokes of my tricycle. The nail still grows split. I remember bath times, the sensation of having nappies changed, lying in my crib, possibly even being breast fed.

Yes, my memories stretch well back. But try as I might, I could never bring back the instant that I arrived into existence. I was always ‘there’, no matter how small. I know that logically this did not prove very much, but to me it equated to a surety of knowledge. I was continuous. There was never a time that I wasn’t. I had always been.

And somehow, for that very same reason, there would never be a time I’d cease to be. Just like that, with a snap of my finger I’d overcome death. In one way or another, my essence would always go on.

To a youngster this was most exciting. I was quite proud of myself as a result. I’d discovered myself to be, if not unchanging, then at least eternal. And that would do me nicely, thanks very much.

Feel it. Savor it. Heft it. Grok it. Sink into the realization. But keep that concept off-limits to your reasoning brain.