Category Archives: Theory of the Conscious Universe

Consciousness Has Been the Black Hole of Physics

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Originally posted July 21, 2011

The Theory of the Conscious Universe was the working title of my book, “You Are the Universe: Imagine That”, released in 2014.

Since Einstein’s famous mind experiments made it possible to think in ways we could never even imagine before, we have learned that Time is Relative to an Observer.

Einstein pictured the Observer riding on a photon of light, and imagined what the Observer would “see” if it were possible to see without the interaction of photons and the eye (which interactions could not occur if one’s eyes were smaller than photons). This mind stretching exercise of imagination led him to make predictions that Quantum Mechanics (QM) has now proven to be accurate many, many times. Time does indeed move more slowly as the Observer approaches the speed of light.

The Observer then began to appear more and more frequently on the stage of physics. However no one dared to focus on the Observer; the Observer functioned as a convenient construct within theory but physicists stayed away from trying to say what the Observer is.

Heisenberg used the Observer to prove that an Observer cannot measure both the vector and position of an electron, but can choose which one to measure and in the process the measurement itself will alter the other value.

The Observer, of course, is consciousness — the experiencer, that which experiences — what is at the core of each of us, our innermost Self.

The ‘black hole” reference in the title refers simply to the way that physics has used the Observer without trying to look inside it.

Bell’s Theorem and the many experiments generated to prove or disprove that theorem, have established that either some things can travel faster than light, or that distance/space itself is an illusion and the entire universe exists within a single point, where everything is connected to everything else.

That the universe exists within a singular point is consistent with the Theory of The Conscious Universe which posits that the Original Experiencer is all that exists, and that the rest of the Universe is a creation of that Experiencer, all existing within Consciousness, the substrate of the Universe. Consciousness does not occupy space nor require the existence of space. According to the Theory of The Conscious Universe, space is an illusion created within Consciousness.

The Original Experiencer, like a computer server, is able to create from Itself networked computers (each of us) with whom the Original Experiencer is in various forms of communication. We are like sensors feeding back our experiences, and the Original Experiencer with its infinite computing power is able to combine and simultaneously experience all of that at once.

An elite team of physicists has recently received a grant to study the differences between our collective subjective experience of reality and the findings of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity. The vision is to be able to combine new insights with QM to explain why we perceive the universe the way we do. The team refers to the Einstein term “block time” — time as a single block not as a running river — as one of the specific things they hope to explain: how is it that time is apparently an illusion (according to certain interpretations of QM and Relativity Theory) and yet we all experience it as reality? Perhaps the team will combine physics with new insights from neuroscience.

The Theory of The Conscious Universe explains that, to the Original Observer*, everything is happening at once in a single instant of time, as a result of the processing power inherent in the Original Observer. To created fictional beings (us) our processing power is so much smaller that we must break down the allness into a sequence — over time — in order to take it all in.

To the Original Observer, it is still the first instant of Time — and will always be.

The creation of “cell selves” provides an infinite variety of experience and creativity to the Original Observer. Perpetual newness rather than sameness. Cell selves at our level have free will and no direct cognizance of sharing the Original Identity. This creates drama. What would you do if you were in the position of the Original Observer — just veg out for eternity?

In other words, it is simple and elegant (Occam’s Razor) to explain everything in the Universe if we take the substrate of Universe to be an Original Observer — our subjective experience, the findings of QM and Relativity, and a lot more. Einstein’s “block time” is just one example of how the picture falls into place — explaining why we subjectively experience time as a series of events while at the same time scientific experimentation tells us that these events do not objectively exist in this temporal relationship.

The principle of “parsimony” (explanations based on the fewest axioms) is a hallmark of science and is often used as a guidepost to identify theories that are more likely to be the actual explanations of reality. Perhaps this lends additional credence to the Theory of The Conscious Universe and justifies its consideration and further investigation of the experimental pathways to proving or disproving our theory.

Questions we will tackle in upcoming postings:

  • How does the Original Observer create the rest of the Universe?
  • Where did the Original Observer come from?
  • What is the relevancy to action decisions if the Theory of The Conscious Universe is correct?

And many more.

Best to all,

Bill

*”Original Observer” and “Original Experiencer” are used interchangeably here.

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The Theory of the Conscious Universe: Where Is the Self in the Brain?

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Originally posted July 16, 2011

The Theory of the Conscious Universe was the working title of my book, “You Are the Universe: Imagine That”, released in 2014.

Picture the neurons in the brain as strings in a violin. Now picture them as superstrings. The brain is both.

In a previous posting we discussed the different “selves” that each individual has within him/herself, which are formed out of associational clusters of neurons constructed in the brain by our experiences after we are born.

These different selves in the software layer are not places amongst the neurons. Not quite. Each self is a particular conversation amongst neurons, and each self is evoked using specific places in the brain where those memories reside.

Each such “self” is a particular dance of the neurons.

Behind all this is the self you were born with.

This raises a semantic issue: the meaning of the word “self”. David Brooks, for example, says in his book THE SOCIAL ANIMAL, “Even up to age three, children don’t seem to get the concept of self-consciously focused attention. They assume that the mind goes blank when there is no outside thing bidding for its attention.”

Elsewhere in the book he says “You are the spiritual entity that emerges out of the material networks in your head.”

In reading this excellent and thought-provoking book, I get the feeling that he means exactly what he says in the prior sentence — that matter comes first, and that the self is part of the mind that arises out of the contacts we have with the rest of the world, and how those experiences dictate the laying down of neurons and connections in our brain.

Now, David is obviously a humanist who talks about moments of transcendence, and emphasizes the importance of emotions and the unconscious mind. At the same time he is probably a materialist, not in the popular social sense but rather as in the philosophy term of art, meaning he believes that matter appears ahead of mind in the timeline of the universe.

After all, read his last sentence above, once more. He is saying that your Self is what emerges out of the neurons that have connected since your birth. Whatever unconscious hard-wired genetic/instinctual predispositions you had at birth did not comprise your true self. To David, “You” remained self-less until your brain was sufficiently formed to where the self-ness function turned on — when you had enough contact with the rest of the world to emerge as a distinct self.

Here we would differ. I take the Self to be an experiential phenomenon. Not an abstract word. Practically every other word that we use refers to an object or something we see outside the Self. The word “Self” however has as its referent the actual ineffable experience you are having right now of being you. Reducing that to a word can be very useful, but can also be counterproductive if it gets us to think of Self as just another “thing” like all the others we perceive. The Self is not like anything else. It is in a class by itself. It is the only thing we know really exists. It is the Knower itself. Everything else is something we perceive indirectly through the physics of perception.

That is what I mean by Self and I suspect with that as a stipulated definition, David would probably agree with what I am saying here.

Once we start to perceive, our Self is lit up — we are the experiencer. If those perceptions start in the womb, or when we take our first breath, we likely have no notion of what is going on. Later, that experiencer undergoes various levels of evolution and becomes self-aware (has what David calls an “inner narrator that he thought of as himself”), and then later capable of looking at his/her own feelings objectively (what David calls “equipoise”). And even capable of Knowing Itself As Universe in moments of what David calls “self-transcendence” — moments when we lose the sense of separateness.

The Self is the experiencer. What the neurons lay down is the software layer. Sometimes, as David acknowledges, there is a fight for control among parts of the brain; we would say that the fight for control also includes one other part besides the ones considered in THE SOCIAL ANIMAL: THE ORIGINAL EXPERIENCER.

The Original Experiencer. The Self that was always there, before these levels of self-awareness that David represents as the step-off point for the Self. The ineffable spark of selfness that you have even before you can see yourself as separate or start to self-narrate or start to decide whether you are lost in bliss or somewhere else. The Self you have when your mind is empty. We would argue this is your true self, not the concoction of neuronal dances that you have going on all the time as a result of your experiences.

This is an important choice to consider in terms of your own thinking, I would submit.

What has all of this, however, got to do with The Theory of the Conscious Universe?

The Theory of the Conscious Universe postulates that the Universe is a single consciousness, is the single Self that exists, and that the Self lives through all Its creations.

As we shall demonstrate in upcoming blog postings, this conception of what we are can explain every detectable phenomenon within an Occam’s Razor scientific model fully synchronous with quantum mechanics (QM).

Because of the importance of consciousness in explaining our “Theory of the Conscious Universe”, we began this posting by talking about when the Self arises — what I call the experiencer. We can’t talk about TTOTCU without first discussing these basic issues.

In describing what consciousness is and how it works we will make frequent analogies to the way computers work. We will explain why we doubt that robots can ever be made to experience, unless they are based on genetic technology, in which case they will not be robots. Yet we will also explain our odd hypothesis that consciousness exists in everything.

As we go along, you may find all the hypotheses in The Theory of the Conscious Universe odd — or perfectly obvious (latter group please send me an email — I’d like to chat).

So, what if anything does this have to do with the primary work of the Human Effectiveness Institute (“THEI”)? Our mission is to enhance human effectiveness. One way of doing this is by freeing the mind of constricting limiting notions that may be based on totally inaccurate pictures of reality.

Best to all,

Bill

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Positive Thinking and Mindfulness Merged Method

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Volume 3, Issue 27

In my theory of everything, we are all one Self. The consciousness of the universe is a single processor so intelligent it can pay attention while looking out through all our eyes at once.

Whether or not my theory is right, it has certain benefits as a working hypothesis, or lens. Maybe it’s a useful fiction.

I say this because when you look at things this way, it’s much easier to turn off negative feelings and turn on positive thinking. Most negative feelings involve other people in some way. Whether you experience the negative feelings toward yourself or toward them, it is not a solution-oriented use of your energy. The situation just sits there, with you feeling bad.

Let’s take a case where the negative feelings are directed at someone else. Someone frustrates you, let’s say. Makes you mad because you have a great idea and they are blocking it. For most of my life this evoked some inner dialog along the lines of mental name-calling, becoming very colorful during teenage years and increasingly inventive over time. I must say I enjoyed such inner venting but it wasn’t very useful in the consensus reality.

If your mindset is that we are all one Being, as soon as you have a negative feeling about someone else, it sort of turns itself off. Or at least that’s what happens after years of going through a process of slowly realizing, each time such a negative feeling arises, that if we are all one Being there is hardly an iota of utility in being mad at another part of your Self.

So nowadays for me the mad happens then fades. I go on to the next logical step which is figuring out what actions to take to move closer to the goal. Creativity flows effortlessly once there are no blocks such as negativity.

This approach to conflict resolution tends to see all parties as having energies to contribute, and finds solutions where all instruments harmonize in the orchestra. It would be interesting to see what would happen to a company or any team that employs this lens.

Now the other case is where you experience negative feelings but they are directed at yourself. You are beating yourself up over something. Again this doesn’t really get you anywhere. Except negativity has utility to the lower self, the ego, which likes negativity because it helps to rationalize behaviors you’d otherwise block with your self-discipline. Such as letting yourself have another drink, smoke, fattening food, or whatever else you do when you rationalize indulging yourself. Negativity as a context is effective in lowering your own internal self-discipline so as to allow self-indulgence, which is a powerful self-defeating factor.

If you’ve got this One-Being lens, you can’t sustain anger at yourself, since that means you’re mad at the ruler of the universe, which seems unwise. He/She living through you is the one that goofed up. Although omniscient in composite, the shard coming through you is still learning and while doing its best, goofed up. What to do to win now is the point to be focused on, not wasting time with unsophisticated self-flagellation about the past even if it is the immediate past.

So, while I can’t currently offer proof that my theory depicts the true nature of reality, wearing the lens as an experiment appears to have tangible and verifiable benefits.

Best to all,

Bill  

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Bring a Sense of the Epic into Your Life

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Volume 3, Issue 11

Science can no longer rule out the possibility that a Single Universal Intelligence is the only thing that exists, per our Theory of the Conscious Universe. Our theory explains how this Intelligence is able to simultaneously play an infinite number of chess games called lives. The You who looks out your eyes and experiences life may not be the gnomish “you” that parts of yourself — neuron clusters programmed by Accidentalism and Materialism — think you are.

Accidentalism is the religion that claims the universe came about by accident out of nothingness.

Materialism is the religion that claims everything is matter, so the human need to worship something can be directed only at material things.

My theory is not a religion. It is a system of hypotheses aimed at explaining all of documented human experience including the “paranormal”. We classify certain experiences as “paranormal” based on our limited experience in the universe as the standard for what is “normal”. And based on our mental emotional ego filters that protect us from dissonance by steadfastly refusing to make anything out of the cumulatively uncanny success rate of our own hunches, thereby trivializing our own experiences of the “paranormal”.

The explanation making the most sense to my gut is that there is only One of us. Each of us is another instance of the Universal Intelligence. All instances are really one Intelligence playing many roles.

The main thing about my theory is that I don’t want you to believe it but rather to test it for yourself. This means using it as a lens of what may in fact be true, certainly is possible, and why not see if using the lens to explain experience might not lead to more control and pleasure than the present way of looking at things?

Some might liken this to a pleasant drug-induced state of useless fantasy. It is equally plausible that the way we as a world look at things today is an unpleasant drug-induced state of useless fantasy.

At any rate, one needs merely to entertain the possibility that the entire selfness of the Universe is what looks out your eyes, which you call yourself “me”. This is logically and empirically possible based on the most predictively successful theory in history, quantum mechanics. So entertain it for a second.

Realize it is possible that you are the one self that exists, enjoying yet another life. Realize if this just happens to be the one true explanation that science and everyone will affirm some day in the future, here you are going to the movies to enjoy identifying with a fictional character who is having an epic adventure, when in fact that is just a fairy tale produced in Hollywood while your own life is a genuine, authentic, rich real life saga of a hero beset by challenges and overcoming them — just like in the movies — but real — and therefore infinitely more meaningful and dramatic.

It is possible that the One Being is you… and everyone else. Possible. Actually possible. You have been betting on a reality so far different from this, your automatic reaction is to thrust it aside with a derisive snort. That reflex is itself an interesting phenomenon deserving careful attention — put a pin in it, we will come back and dissect it often on this page in the future. Call it your daily persona, “the robot”. The name is a handle to put on that aspect of your self — the reasons will become apparent in this blog and in my books (including Mind Magic) and DVDs. 

Don’t let the thrusting aside of new concepts or experiences be internally accepted. Override it by an act of will from your true self. Keep an open mind. Empirical evidence is the only thing to give weight to. Things you yourself have experienced, seen with your own eyes, not things you were told. All the philosophies and cosmologies and religions and scientific theories and my theories are just abstractions of the real thing — symbol systems, metaphors, isomorphisms (same information carried in different code). Reality is what it is. As a race we cannot say yet that we really know what it is. Therefore an open mind is the only sane position — yet another clue that the present world system is not actually sane. Acceleritis has caused EOP. Information overload has actually existed for 6000 years and just keeps getting worse, exponentially. We are dealing with it very poorly. Our society is not yet a sophisticated one. Civilization on planet Earth will be sane and sophisticated when its mind is open and each person is making careful and unfiltered observations of his/her own experience. The Observer state leading to the Flow state.

Takeaway: don’t thrust aside the undisprovable possibility that you are the hero in the most epic movie of all time… and so is everyone else.

Best to all,

Bill

PS — You Are The Universe  is now on track for Summer 2013 publication. Watch this space for more.