My Big TOE
AWAKENING – DISCOVERY — INNER WORKINGS
A TRILOGY UNIFYING PHILOSOPHY, PHYSICS, AND METAPHYSICS
Thomas Campbell
Book 1 – Awakening – Abridged Version – Preface and Foreword
Preface: Author’s Note to the Reader
Yes, you should read this preface.
We of Western culture are an impatient goal oriented people driven toward endpoints. In our rush to the finish line, we take little notice of the journey that gets us there. Such a misappropriation of emphasis often squanders our opportunities because, more often than not, the tastiest and most nourishing part of life lies in experiencing the process, not in attaining the goal.
I strongly suggest that you adopt an attitude of patience toward gaining an understanding of the profound mysteries and ancient secrets that are logically unraveled by this new physics. My Big Picture Theory Of Everything (My Big TOE) will take you to both the beginning and to the end of time. It will dive deeply into the human heart as well as probe the limits of the human mind. It will define the significance of you, and provide new meaning to your existence. It will help you realize and optimize your potential. It will develop a wholly new scientific understanding of both your inside and outside world.
You may find it more productive to pace yourself by depth of comprehension than by percent of completion. Avoid rushing from concept to concept the way children pursue presents on Christmas day. Take your time. A feast for heart, head, and soul is best ingested little by little, bite by bite, with many thoughtful pauses and much careful cogitation to aid digestion. Genuine breakthroughs must be absorbed slowly as existing paradigms grudgingly dissolve. Familiar paradigms, like a favorite teddy bear, can be extremely difficult to let go.
I have carefully aimed the content of this scientific and philosophic exposition at a general audience of varied background. You do not need a scientific, philosophical, or metaphysical background to understand the content of the My Big Picture Theory Of Everything trilogy. No leaps of faith or beliefs are required to get to where these books will take you. A determined and tenacious truth seeker — a sturdy, independent intellect that is by nature open minded and skeptical — constitutes the optimal reader. There are no prerequisites. If you have a logical, open, and inquisitive mind — an attitude of scientific pragmatism that appreciates the elegance of fundamental truth and the thrill of breakthrough — you will enjoy this journey of personal and scientific discovery.
Under the best of circumstances the successful communication of this trilogy’s content will require much from both of us. This work presents many unique and daunting challenges to the effective communication between author and reader. Worldviews are not casually picked, like fruit, from a vendor’s cart: To make the necessary connections, we must dive deeply.
Far beneath the foundation of your intellect, your culture lays out the template for your worldview upon the core belief systems that define your perception of existence. The basic assumptions that support your notion of reality are not seen by you as assumptions at all — they are accepted, without question, as the most solid of all facts. That is simply the nature of culture — belief at the bone and sinew level of awareness. The point is: The concepts presented by this trilogy are likely to challenge the belief systems of your culture — regardless of what culture you come from.
Material within My Big TOE may challenge your familiar assumptions, beliefs, and paradigms to the point of serious discomfort. If that discomfort leads to a profitable resolution, I am pleased; if it does not, I am saddened. My goal is to be informative and helpful. I encourage you to take what you can profitably use and leave the rest.
You may find the text to be challenging in some places and obvious in others. What is too challenging or too obvious to each reader is mostly dependent on the experience and understanding of that individual reader. It is my intent to never speed through this exposition at such a rate that you cannot appreciate the scenery, nor to wallow about repetitively in the obvious — though from time to time, depending on your background, some may feel that I occasionally do both.
Although the language of American English (the language in which these books were originally written) is decidedly poor in nonphysical conceptual descriptors, it does have the advantage of being unusually rich in communications and information technology descriptors. The latter, oddly enough, is what allows me to convey the former. As strange as that may seem, it is the pervasiveness of modern science and technology, especially communications and data processing technology, that provides the conceptual tools required to produce a model of the larger reality the Western mind — or more broadly, the Western attitude or more accurately, the Western belief system — can relate to, understand, and work with.
Science and technology have advanced to the point where their applications and understanding have begun to mirror some of the fundamental processes of existence. We of the twenty-first century have only recently acquired the necessary concepts to understand and appreciate the nature of the larger reality within the context of our contemporary Western point of view. Previously, knowledge and understanding of the Big Picture and our existence in it was comprehended and described by ancient sages in terms of metaphors that were pertinent to their cultures and specifically created for the benefit of their specific audiences. Today, we find these once practical descriptions to be largely symbolic and irrelevant to a modern scientific view of reality. Philosophy, theology, and science find themselves at odds over what is significant.
I am a scientist. This trilogy is the result of a long and careful scientific exploration focused upon the nature of reality and the individual. Preconceived notions will be more of a hindrance than a help. It is the task of this trilogy to clearly and completely construct your consciousness, your world, your science, and your existence in a general, logical, scientific way that comprehensively explains all the personal and professional data you have collected during a lifetime.
Patience will be required. This adventure of mind, science, and spirit is complex and will take significant time to properly unfold. If it were immediately obvious, it would either be old news or you would be reading a short journal article instead of a trilogy. A keen mind that is skeptical and open is the only ticket you need to take this journey.
Based on the feedback from those who have preceded you, I expect that you will find this voyage into the depths of elemental consciousness and fundamental reality to be personally enriching. You will be pushed to think a few big thoughts and ponder a few big ideas, but the conclusions you eventually come away with will be entirely yours, not mine. These are not books that set out to convince you of anything, or persuade you towards a particular point of view. At every turn you are strongly dissuaded from becoming a believer.
Data, facts, and measurable results are the exclusive currency upon which this trilogy trades.
Reading the My Big TOE trilogy is not likely to be a passive experience. If you decide to seize the opportunity to climb out of the box, you will likely end up doing some difficult work. You will always be encouraged to think for yourself and come to conclusions that are based on your personal experience.
Much of what you believe to be true about yourself, your existence, and the nature of reality will be challenged. If you are open to exploring a bigger picture, these books will make you think, and think again. Most readers will not consider this trilogy to be an easy read — merely following the logical processes and sequences as they swallow up old paradigms will require some focused effort. On the other hand, significant growth and learning is rarely easy — if easy, it is rarely significant.
Foreword: A Conceptual Orientation
Without the proper perspective, clear vision produces only data. The point here is to give the reader an initial high altitude peek at the forest before we begin our trek into its depths. In this foreword, I will describe where you will be going and what you should expect to accomplish. It is always helpful to know where you are headed even if you have no idea of how you are going to get there. This conceptual fly-over is designed to minimize the disorienting affect of totally unfamiliar territory.
Both the structure and the content of your perception of reality are culturally dependent. How a Tibetan Buddhist monk or an American physicist would describe reality is as vastly different as the words, expressions, and metaphors that each would employ to make such a description. What would make sense and be obvious to one would seem to be lost and out of touch to the other. If we can rise above our cultural bias, we have a tendency to ask, or at least wonder: Which description is right and which one is wrong? They seem clearly incompatible — certainly both could not be equally accurate and correct. if we are more sophisticated, we might ask which portions of each description are right or wrong and search for areas of possible agreement as well as define areas that appear to be mutually exclusive. That is a better approach, but it is still wrong-headed.
Neither of the above approaches, though the second is much more expansive than the first, will find truth. Which is right or wrong is the wrong question — it represents a narrow and exclusive perspective. Which works, which helps its owner to better attain his or her goals, which goals are more productive and lead to growth and progress of the individual — to happiness, satisfaction and usefulness to others? These are somewhat better questions because they focus on practical results and on the measurable effects that each worldview has when applied to individuals — as well as the secondary effects those individuals have on others. However, something important is missing.
How does one define, realize, and measure the satisfaction, personal growth, quality of life, and fulfillment of individual purpose that is derived from each worldview? What is the standard against which the achievement of these goals is assessed? Now we have a set of questions that have the potential to lead to personal discovery in pursuit of fundamental truth. Big Picture Significance and value have replaced little picture right and wrong as the primary measure of worth.
Fundamental truth (Big Picture Truth or simply Big Truth), though absolute and uniformly significant to everyone, must be discovered by each individual within the context of that individual’s experience. No one approach to that discovery is the right one for everybody. The significance of “little truth,” on the other hand, is circumstantial and relative to the observer.
Truth exists in all cultures. It is only understandable to an individual when it is expressed in the cultural language (symbols, metaphors, and concepts) of that individual. It is the intent of My Big TOE to capture the scientific and metaphysical truth from multiple cultures and multiple disciplines and present them within one coherent, self- consistent model that the objective Western mind can easily comprehend. After all, a TOE (Theory Of Everything) must contain and explain everything. That is a tall order. A Big Picture Theory Of Everything or Big TOE must include metaphysics (ontology, epistemology, and cosmology) as well as physics and the other sciences within a single seamless integrated model of reality. That is what the My Big TOE trilogy is all about.
Truth is truth, but communicating a truth to another is a difficult undertaking fraught with misunderstandings of meaning and interpretation. Big Truth, like wisdom, is not something you can teach or learn from a book. It must be comprehended by individuals within the context of their experience. Each of us comes to an understanding of reality through our interpretation of our physical and mental experiences.
The experience of others can at best provide a useful model — a framework for understanding — a perspective that enables us to comprehend and interpret our experience data in a way that makes good practical sense. The best teachers can do no more than offer a consistent and coherent understanding of reality that helps their students find the larger perspective required to self-discover Big Truth. Such a model is only correct and comprehensive if it accurately describes all the data (physics and metaphysics) all the time under all circumstances for everyone who applies it. The usefulness of a model depends on how correctly it describes the data of experience. A good model should be predictive. It should explain what is known, produce useful new knowledge, and provide a more productive understanding of the whole.
If My Big TOE communicates something of significance to you by resonating with your unique knowing, then this particular expression of the nature of reality suits your being. If it leaves you untouched, perhaps some other view of reality will speak to you more effectively. The form your understanding takes is not significant — it is the results that count! If you are prodded to a more productive understanding, you are on the right track. The expression of reality that most effectively nudges your understanding in the direction of learning, growing, and evolving a higher quality of being, is the right one for you. My Big TOE is not the only useful expression that Big Truth can take. Nevertheless, it is a uniquely comprehensive model of reality that speaks the language of the Western analytical approach. This Big TOE trilogy fully integrates a subjective, personal, and holistic worldview with objective science. East and West merge, not simply as a compatible or mutually reinforcing mixture, but as a fully integrated single solution.
When some people hear the word “model,” they imagine a scale model — a miniature version of the real thing. My Big TOE has nothing to do with scale models. A model is an intellectual device that theoreticians use to achieve a more concrete understanding of an abstract concept. Models are often developed to describe an unknown function, interaction, or process (something that lies beyond our current individual experience) in terms of something more comprehensible. The model itself may closely resemble the reality it describes or merely describe its inputs and outputs. In either case, do not confuse the model of reality with reality itself. Please repeat that twice before going on.
If you have enough direct experience and a deep understanding of what is being modeled, the model becomes superfluous. With no direct experience, the model enables an understanding that is otherwise impossible to attain. With limited direct experience, the model allows you to place your limited experience within the context of the consistent logical structure of the model. To those with enough experience to incite curiosity and formulate practical questions, the model brings, a meaningful interpretation and explanation to data (experience, information, fragments of truth) that otherwise seem hopelessly random and unconnected.
The model of reality developed within this trilogy enables you to understand the properties and characteristics of reality, how you interact with reality, the point of reality, and the boundaries, processes, functions, and mechanics of reality. It describes the what, the why and the how (the nature, purpose, and rules) of the interplay and interaction among substance, energy, and consciousness. You will discover the distinction between the objective physical outside world and the subjective nonphysical inside world of mind and consciousness is wholly dependent upon, and relative to, the observer.
The model of reality developed within My Big TOE is not the only valid metaphor or description of the nature of the larger reality. Nevertheless, this model is perhaps more understandable to those of us who are accustomed to understanding our local reality in terms of the processes and measurements of objective causality. A materialistic or scientific definition of reality is sometimes referred to as “Western” because the notion that reality is built upon an inviolate objective causality lies at the core of the Western cultural belief system.
My Big TOE is written to be especially accessible to this Western mindset or Western attitude. The West does not now have, nor has it ever had, a monopoly on a process oriented, materialistic, and objective approach to existence and reality. We in the West have perhaps pursued science and technology more religiously than others, and have no doubt added a unique cultural slant to our particular brand of consumer-based materialism, but the basics of what I am calling a Western attitude are thoroughly entrenched worldwide and expanding in every direction.
The stunning success of science and engineering in the twentieth century would seem to prove the usefulness as well as the correctness of this Western view. The result is that many people, whether from the East, West, North, or South of our planet, view reality from an objective and materialistic perspective that often coexists with some culturally based traditional form of religious and social dogma.
Thus, a balance, or standoff, between our inner and outer needs evolves into a practical worldview that encourages Western material productivity. A pragmatic materialism that depends on objective causality is used to generate the appearance of a manipulatable, rational stability on the outside, while a belief-system of some sort provides the necessary personal security on the inside. To eliminate the discomfort of conflicting worldviews, the two ends of this bipolar conceptual dichotomy are typically kept separate and do not mix or integrate to any significant depth. Each supports the other superficially as they together produce a materially focused, responsible, upwardly striving worker with a good work ethic, cooperative values, an inclination toward dependency, and a high tolerance of pain.
Because the Western mind-set is growing and spreading rapidly, and because the human spirit often withers on the vine before beginning to ripen in such an environment, it is particularly important to blaze a trail to the understanding of the larger reality in the terms, language, and metaphors of this mind-set. As a product of American culture myself, and as a scientist, I have endeavored to craft a model of the larger reality that not only appears rational to the objective Western attitude, but also provides a comprehensive, complete, and accurate model that Western science can build upon.
My Big TOE provides an understanding of reality that can profitably be used by both science and philosophy — one that provides an original perspective, and makes a significant contribution to physics and metaphysics as well as to several other traditional academic and practical disciplines.
The problem physicists are currently having describing a consistent reality is primarily because of the way they define space, time, objectivity, and consciousness. Their current ideas of these basic concepts contain limitations derived from erroneous cultural beliefs. It is this belief-induced blindness that creates scientific paradoxes (such as wave/particle duality and the instantaneous communication between an entangled pair). As Einstein pointed out more than half a century ago, space and time, as we interact with and experience them, are illusions. Many of the best scientists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries realize this fact, but did not and do not know what to do about it or how to proceed. Their problem is one of perspective — their conceptualization of reality is too limited (only a little picture) to contain the answer.
Albert Einstein’s space-time field (as described in his Unified Field Theory) asserted a nonphysical field as the basis for matter specifically and reality in general, thereby moving science closer to the truth, but he did not appreciate the discrete digital properties of space and time or the role of consciousness (instead of space-time) as the primary energy field. Einstein’s student and colleague, the great quantum physicist David Bohm (along with a few of the best Quantum Mechanics theorists including Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Eugene Wigner) made the consciousness connection but missed the digital connection and the Big Picture.
Contemporary physicist Edward Fredkin and his Digital Physics movement. make the digital connection (quantized space and time) and are heading in the right direction, as were Einstein, Bohr, and Bohm, but they are missing a solid connection to consciousness. Digital physics has not yet discovered that consciousness is the computer. All are missing an appreciation of the natural limitations of our physical objective causality and a coherent vision of the Big Picture that ties everything together. You will be shown not only all of the pieces of this both ancient and contemporary reality-puzzle, but will also see how they fit together — philosophy and science, mind and matter, normal and paranormal — into a single unified coherent Big Picture.
The evolution of knowledge demands that sooner or later, truth must succeed and falsity must self-destruct. Although the consensus of culturally empowered opinion may carry the day, measurable results will carry the day after that. The value and success of My Big TOE must be measured in terms of the personal and objective results that it produces. Only truth can produce significant consistent results. In contrast, falsity excels at producing assertive beliefs, arguments, and opinions. Open your mind, remain skeptical, pursue only significant measurable results, and let the chips fall where they may.
My Big TOE is in the form of a reality model at a level that is necessarily unusual, but easy to understand. It provides an exploration of the scientific and philosophical implications of consciousness evolution, a subject that holds critical significance for everyone.
Because this material must develop entirely new scientific and reality paradigms, it requires an extensive presentation to shed light upon the limitations of culturally habituated patterns of thought — a goal that cannot be both quickly and effectively reached. Such an in-depth multi-disciplined analysis is better suited to a trilogy than to the condensed formal structure of a traditional scientific paper.
The focus of this trilogy is directed toward the potential significance that My Big TOE holds for each individual reader. These books were written for you — you will find their tone to be more personal than general, more of a sharing of experience and concepts, than a lecture by an expert. It is your potential personal interaction with this material that has initiated, as well as driven, its development.
You will find an open, logical, and skeptical mind with a broad depth of experience is much more helpful than a technical background. The details of little picture reality are by nature highly technical, the exclusive territory of modern science and mathematics. On the other hand, Big Picture reality is available and accessible to anyone with an open mind and the will to apply it. There are no requirements for formal education or technical credentials in order to understand what is presented here.
Culturally conditioned mental reflexes may need to be re-examined, generalized, and expanded. The fact that some of the content of this trilogy is likely to lie far beyond the comfortable familiarity of your personal experience creates a difficult communications problem for both of us. My Big TOE not only requires you to think out-of-the-box, but out-of-the-ballpark (if not out-of-the-universe), as well. You will be challenged to overcome deep seated knee-jerk cultural drag in order to climb high enough up the mountain to get a good view.
It should not be too surprising that science, in its relentless explorations of the unknown, would one day arrive at the roots of existence itself. As it turns out, the nature of reality has both an objective and a subjective component. My Big TOE provides a thoroughly scientific description of an objective Theory Of Everything that covers all aspects of reality in an entirely general way. Additionally, it provides a remarkably practical, personally significant understanding of subjective consciousness, and explains how you individually are related to the larger reality. To appreciate and deeply understand the personal or subjective nature of consciousness, you must grow your own Big TOE. One of the major goals of My Big TOE is to provide the logical conceptual framework, materials, tools, and direction that you need to independently grow your Big TOE.
My Big TOE will provide the foundation and structure that you need to make sense of both your objective and subjective experience. Your personal Big Understanding of Big Truth must flow primarily from your direct experience — not from your intellect alone. This trilogy will bring your objective and subjective experience together under one coherent understanding of the whole you.
After reading the My Big TOE trilogy, you will better understand the universal (objective) and the personal (subjective) nature of perception, consciousness, reality, and Big TOES. You will learn to appreciate the fact that the larger reality extends beyond objective causality, beyond the reach of intellectual effort, into the subjective mind of each individual. My Big TOE is the launch pad. Your Big TOE is the final destination.
A personal Big TOE is necessary because the larger reality, like your consciousness, has a subjective component as well as a collective objective component. The larger reality cannot be fully appreciated or understood merely by studying, or reading about it. You must experience it. Additionally, your understanding of the Big Picture must be sufficient to integrate your subjective experience with your shared objective knowledge or both will remain superficial. To the traditional scientist and other left-brained analytical types, what I have just said sounds suspiciously like a mixing of real science and hocus-pocus, touchy-feely, belief-baloney.
Arriving at conclusions based upon the assumed infallibility and apparent truth of culturally, personally, and professionally embedded paradigms and dogmas will make it difficult to understand the larger reality. Change and new ways of thinking are often traumatic, difficult to integrate, and generally unwelcome. Resistance to change is automatic at the gut level; we cling to familiar ways for the security and comfort they provide. We do not easily see unfamiliar patterns. You must be willing to overcome fear and rise above self-imposed belief-blindness if you are to succeed in getting a good look at the Big Picture.
In the pages ahead, we are going to explore the reality-wilderness. This trilogy is about the how, what, and why of what is. It is about physics and metaphysics, your world and other worlds. It is about beginnings, endings, mind and matter, point and purpose — it is also about the quality of your personal consciousness.
Your intellectual understanding of the reality you exist within, and are a part of is only the beginning — a place to start. The most important action, the real fun, begins after you have finished the trilogy and begin to apply what you have learned about reality and the Big Picture to the rest of your life — both professionally and personally.
Though you will soon learn there is more to reality than theory and facts, here is one fact that you should consider before you begin: Big Truth, once understood and assimilated, always modifies your intent, and invariably leads to personal change.