We Are the Clay. Geography Is the Kiln.

My son sent me this drawing the other day, and it stopped me for a minute.

Not because I think somebody came back from the dead carrying the blueprints to the universe. And not because I suddenly believe a hand-drawn diagram proves how existence works.

It stopped me because of how familiar some of it felt.

At the top are the words, “Intent is form. Love is Law. All flows.”

Then this strange progression of states. Highest. Higher. Middle. Lower. Yes. Proceed. Maybe. Stop. Wait. Not yet. And underneath it all, people. Humans. Each apparently connected by these individual “threads of passage” to something much larger than themselves.

It’s a hell of an image.

And maybe there’s another reason it stopped me.

I’ve never really written much of anything other than technical manuals, but after my accident, I started writing about things I never expected to write about. Things I’m still not entirely sure how to explain.

I’ve wondered whether there was a point when I simply wasn’t here anymore. Whether I died, came incredibly close, or whether an injured brain can manufacture experiences that feel every bit as real as waking life—I don’t know.

I’m not claiming I crossed over. I’m not claiming I saw heaven. And I’m definitely not claiming this drawing proves any of it.

But when you’ve had an experience that leaves you genuinely uncertain about where that line was—or whether you crossed it—you look at things like this a little differently.

Some of this resonates with me in a way I can’t completely explain.

And maybe that’s why I keep staring at the damn thing.

The story circulating with the drawing is that it came from a near-death experience—that somebody crossed whatever boundary separates here from there, saw something, came back, and tried to put it on paper.

Maybe.

But there’s another part of this that I find even more interesting. Very little of what’s drawn here is actually new. The idea of different levels or states of existence appears all over human history. Mysticism, religion, philosophy and near-death accounts have all wrestled with versions of it. The “Over-Soul” goes straight back into transcendentalist thought. Even “Love is Law” has historical baggage; similar wording famously appears in Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic writings.

So I don’t look at this and think, Holy shit, somebody found the map.

I look at it and wonder: Why do human beings, separated by generations, geography, religion and culture, keep drawing strangely similar maps?

Maybe we are the clay, and geography is the kiln.

We start as the same basic human material, but where we happen to be born fires something different into us. One culture gives it one name. Another gives it another. Heaven. Spirit. Consciousness. The soul. The Over-Soul. Reincarnation. Energy. God.

Different kilns. Different finished pieces.

But maybe the clay underneath isn't all that different.

Maybe we influence each other. Maybe old ideas get repackaged as new revelations. That tends to happen after a few millennia. Or maybe people keep reaching for different words, symbols and drawings because they're all trying to describe something that is incredibly difficult to put into words.

I have no idea.

And I think “I have no idea” is actually a pretty damn good place to start.

Because the interesting part isn’t believing this drawing.

It’s asking why somebody felt compelled to draw it in the first place—and why, looking at it, some of us immediately feel like we’ve seen pieces of it somewhere before.