My Big TOE
AWAKENING – DISCOVERY — INNER WORKINGS
A TRILOGY UNIFYING PHILOSOPHY, PHYSICS, AND METAPHYSICS
Thomas Campbell
Book 2 Discovery – Abridged Version – Part 11
Consciousness comes in varying degrees of quality, which may suggest to you a comparative scale that arranges consciousness from worst to best. You would probably find it very interesting to know where you fit on that scale. Am I right?
A highly developed consciousness is also a bright and aware consciousness; nevertheless, no matter what subset of reality it exists in, it does not feel (perceive itself to be) superior to anything, including a small bag of PMR dirt. Both physical and nonphysical beings can exhibit a low quality of consciousness that may have dim intelligence; additionally, these lower quality beings (human or otherwise) often feel superior to everyone and everything else.
You must have fear and its derivative, ego, to feel superior to others, or to feel that others are superior to you. I hear you wondering, “A high quality consciousness is certainly superior to a lower quality consciousness, isn’t it?” The problem here is the word “superior.” Although there are clear distinctions in the quality of consciousness, these distinctions do not constitute a viable hierarchy. There is no vertical (superior — inferior) rating scale that has value or meaning in the absence of fear and ego. Different quality consciousness is simply different. Is a house superior to a car? Is an adult superior to a child? Each has its reason, function, and purpose for existing.
A high quality of consciousness is naturally bright and exceptionally aware and is thus cognizant of the differences between itself and a significantly lower quality of consciousness. However, a high quality being does not consider itself the least bit superior. If you think that does not make sense and have a difficult time imagining such an attitude, what would that tell you about yourself? On the other hand, less evolved individuated consciousness is likely to believe that a high quality-of-consciousness being is inferior to them.
A being with a low-entropy high quality-of-consciousness has a great deal of power (digital energy that is available to reconfigure bits within the larger system) that may be used to affect other beings (and things) both physical and nonphysical. Such a being exercises powerful influences and capabilities only when it knows the effect would be truly helpful (in the Big Picture) to everyone involved. Being helpful to others in the Big Picture usually (but not always) means helping others grow the quality of their consciousness. From their larger perspective and greater understanding, a highly evolved consciousness intuitively knows what constitutes right action in the Big Picture.
Hopefully, by now you have gotten used to the idea of enlarging your useful mind-space, of expanding your reality by penetrating that self- imposed darkness (personal, cultural, religious, and scientific belief systems) with the bright glow from your new Big TOE.
You can’t get there from here unless you are able and willing to step out of the little PMR box and into the larger consciousness ecosystem. Out of the box thoughts do not have to be wild and scary if you employ a careful scientific methodology to gain solid evidential understanding within a Big Picture perspective and get used to being a tad different.
You are a consciousness model that is bounded and executed within NPMRN to exercise the free will choices of an individuated NPMRN entity in order to improve the overall quality of the larger consciousness system by improving your personal quality. You improve your quality by engaging in a process that temporarily constrains a portion of your awareness to an experiential virtual reality defined by a space-time rule-set that produces a rich array of growth inducing opportunities. To facilitate evolution through a bootstrapping process of incremental entropy reduction, PMR is designed to provide each participating individuated consciousness with millions of significant quality- challenging choices, as well as feedback relative to the results of each choice made.
Notice that your individuated consciousness works on two levels simultaneously: it must operate within the mind-space rule-set of NPMRN while periodically constraining further individuated subsets of its awareness to virtual PMRs. From your perspective, this dual functioning within two dimensions of the larger reality accounts for spirit, mind, consciousness, or intuition on one hand, and your body or physical reality on the other. You and your reality appear to be composed of two disparate types of being (physical and mental or body and spirit), but you are not. All is consciousness; the physical reality you experience is a virtual one — an experience of mind.
Every consciousness is provided sufficient memory, a conscience (top level rule-set), the rules of engagement (lower level rule-set), and adequate processing capability to profitably interact (share data) within the local internal and external environments defined by both rule-sets. How these basic functions are implemented within a given consciousness varies widely.
We have sensors (representing the five physical senses) and the connection to our nonphysical part (intuition) that collects (samples) information. Likewise, we have been given a top-level rule-set, enough memory, and sufficient processing capacity to profitably evaluate the feed-back from our external and internal environments. The results of our combined abilities interacting with other players (our environments) provide us with opportunities to optimize our choice making.
We, as a species, want to study, understand, and enhance the potential of our evolution. We are apparently our favorite subject of study: Anthropology, archeology, medicine, biology, psychology, sociology, political science, and economics are all about us — us studying how and why we do what we do.
Aware consciousness is interactive. That is its fundamental characteristic. Team this proclivity to interact with the Fundamental Process and you get primal inquisitiveness — a drive to bootstrap profitability through interactive choice-making — a consciousness compelled to express itself, to experiment, to know, and to understand.
Consciousness simply wants to know, experience, experiment, explore the possibilities, improve itself, decrease its entropy, develop its personal power, reach its maximum potential, and evolve. That is its nature: the nature of awareness, the nature of sentience, the nature of digital potential energy organizing itself to achieve greater profitability by applying an iterative synergistic process. Individuated consciousness experiences its own existence through an interactive awareness of itself (inside experience relative to its internal environment) and through an interactive awareness of “other” (outside experience relative to its external environment). Awareness, at its most basic level, represents the appreciation of profitability. It is a self-controlled process involving input data, information transfer, processing, and memory. Awareness is the outcome of the Fundamental Process interacting with digital potential; it represents a natural and necessary state, expression, and activity of consciousness.
While driving, you become aware of a brick lying in the street and your memory and processing units urge you to avoid it. A computer becomes aware that a new USB device has recently been plugged in and that a music CD has been placed in CD-ROM drive E. Its memory and processing units load the appropriate drivers and ask you which track to play. A plant becomes aware that sunlight always comes from a particular direction and its memory and processing units rearrange the position of its leaves to optimize its exposure. There are as many levels of awareness and feedback as there are of consciousness; likewise, there are many types and implementation of memory and processing. Don’t take the narrow view.
Self-awareness begins with inside experience. With enough self- definition, environmental definition, interactive experience, and processing sophistication, self-awareness may develop a notion of individual existence relative to the experienceable whole. There are many shades and variations of self-awareness as well. Do not get stuck thinking that an awareness that is not like your awareness is not a real awareness. Such self-centered arrogance may make you feel special but will blind you to a bigger picture of existence.
Let us take a moment to define the terms consciousness, awareness, intelligence and sentience. We have used these terms in a general way without much confusion, but now it is time to be more precise.
“Sentient” is defined by Microsoft Bookshelf 2000 as “having sense perception; conscious.” If we generalize the obvious carbon-based life- forms bias, the definition becomes: having perception, conscious. We might expand this to include: having the ability to interact with, or perceive itself or its environment; having awareness. Terms like “conscious awareness” and “aware consciousness” may seem redundant but using the words “conscious” and “awareness” together emphasizes the fundamental connectedness of both concepts. Do you think that a clam is sentient? Sure, if it pulls in its foot and slams it shell shut to protect itself when you poke it. If it is interactive, it must be aware and therefore sentient.
I think of consciousness as the fundamental quantity, and of awareness as its basic attribute. The relationship between consciousness and awareness is similar to the relationship between love and caring for others. Consciousness just is, while awareness ranges from very dim to very bright. Awareness collects data while intelligence is an attribute of awareness that processes, manipulates, evaluates, and interprets that collected data to produce an original higher level understanding, organization, or insight. Intelligence, like awareness, represents ability, has an associated capacity, and ranges from very dim to very bright.
Is a clam bright? Maybe? Compared to what? The degree of awareness is relative over a wide span bounded by a limiting capacity that is more or less fixed for a given type of sentient consciousness. Both the awareness level and intellectual capacity are subject to change through growth and learning (evolution). Hence, the phrase “a dim consciousness” is simply a short-cut for “a consciousness with dim awareness.”
Given that consciousness is interactive, it is easy to see that awareness is the inevitable result of consciousness urged forward by evolution. Is it clear why consciousness is driven to interact? Inquisitiveness is merely a more specialized categorization of the general concept of expanding into all the available states of possible existence in search of self-improvement.
The Fundamental Process (our second and final basic assumption) is necessary and sufficient to drive the interactive dynamics of an evolving consciousness. Recall that the existence of a fundamental pervasive consciousness potential is our first basic assumption (see Chapter 24, Book 1). From the creative union of these two assumptions all reality flows — and Your Big TOE grows.
The Fundamental Process drives the system to explore the possibilities at its fingertips. Exploration, curiosity, inquisitiveness, and expanding into the available states are all expressions of the imperative to implement the Fundamental Process of evolution. As a self-modifying system with positive feedback, it is AUM’s nature, our nature, and the nature of consciousness to change, grow, and evolve toward more profitable states of being (self-improvement) by lowering system entropy. A system with more personal power and capability implies more energy available to do the work of evolution.
Consciousness will necessarily evolve, as evidenced by its increasing or decreasing quality and entropy, whether it intends to, or not. An entity’s environment (internal or external) drives the direction of its evolution. Whenever a wide, content-rich array of significant and challenging choices exists, a relatively strong and constant evolutionary pressure is produced. This pressure, when created within consciousness, is channeled by intent and leads to state changes (growth or more profitable organization) within the original consciousness. Because evolution is an accelerating process, conscious systems evolve more quickly than biological systems, which are driven by survival and procreation issues and relatively slow feedback mechanisms that allow us plenty of time to understand and weigh the consequences of our choices.
The Big Picture should be beginning to take shape in your mind. Consciousness energy of sufficient capacity naturally evolves itself into a dynamic system of interactive processes that generate cumulative self-modifying growth. Expanding the synergy that is derived from more profitably organizing the potential of your consciousness is equivalent to increasing your quality and lowering your entropy. Does it amuse or astound you that as an individuated self-organizing digital system, a more profitable configuration of your personal digital content is called spiritual growth? Could you have imagined that spirituality and science would one day converge in a digital systems view of reality? Think about that. Isn’t it amazing how Big Truth in one elegant assertion pulls seemingly opposite concepts into a unified broader understanding? The capability to make a meaningful whole out of disparate pieces is the hallmark of Big Truth.
The fundamental evolutionary process needs only one thing other than itself to form a dynamic progressive system of being. That one thing is a source and form of self-relational potential synergy capable of generating a rich array of interrelated organizational possibilities of varying profitability relative to its internal and external environments. Together, consciousness and evolution create aware beings, systems, or entities that are self-modifying and that exhibit directional growth toward increased functional and operational profitability. At the most basic level, consciousness is simply a self-optimizing digital system that exhibits the four attributes given at the beginning of Chapter 7 of this book.
Your consciousness is clearly an individual thing and not a group thing. That is why spiritual growth, improving the quality of your consciousness, and the evolution of your awareness must be an individual thing. Only you can do it for you; no one else can help very much. The quality of your consciousness is your responsibility and can be affected only by you. This is not a harsh judgment, leaving you stranded and alone in the sometimes dangerous and often unfathomable jungle of mind-space. It is simply the nature of consciousness, how reality is. You should accept that fact and begin work as an individual instead of looking for solace in, or expecting progress from, a group activity or from reading a book like this one. To be sure, these outside factors can be helpful in stimulating and aiding your process of learning, but by themselves they can effect no change in the quality of your being.
This discussion of individual consciousness may make you wonder if there is such a thing as group consciousness. There is, but group consciousness is not a different form of consciousness, it is merely a group of individual consciousness sharing intent and data in common. The good news is that group consciousness is an extremely efficient way to distribute information, values, and content to produce a profoundly shared experience. The bad news is that the level or quality of interaction tends to gravitate toward the lowest common denominator because higher quality consciousness can, with little to no effort, always step down to where it came from while lower quality cannot easily step up to expressions it has never attained. Group mind, in order to stay cohesive and connected, must degenerate to the lowest common acceptable quality level.
For a few examples of group consciousness, consider the participants at a religious revival meeting, a group of vigilantes, a topnotch athletic team, a street gang, or a large group of teenagers hanging out at the local mall or high school parking lot. Group consciousness, sometimes degenerating to mob consciousness, can generate bizarre and brutal behavior. On the other hand, some would say the group consciousness that permeates a rock concert simply creates a better party atmosphere.
Culture itself is a form of group consciousness. Widely shared beliefs (cultural, religious, scientific, personal, social, or political) represent a manifestation of group mind. Social animals such as those who typically congregate in herds, packs, flocks, colonies, pods, societies, nations, religions, or terrorist cells) exhibit a group consciousness that is focused upon common goals (success, safety, or anxiety reduction, for example) and held together by common instincts, beliefs, needs, and traditions. It is a fact that much of what we claim as independent thought and hold as unquestionable truth is actually no more than a knee-jerk expression of group mind reciting the shared beliefs that bind us together. This is another example of an attribute that is as easy to see in other social groupings (terrorist cells, political parties, or religions to which we do not belong) as it is difficult to see in our own.
We are just as committed to what appears to us as obvious truth delivered up by the various group minds we belong to as is any other member of any other group. The subjective reality of higher entropy individuals (most of us) is defined by their beliefs. Precious little of what is significant within our everyday local reality is other than subjective. The objective tidbits that do impose themselves upon us are usually used as nails upon which we hang more important subjective interpretations.
Given that group mind naturally degenerates to the lowest common acceptable quality level, what does this fact logically infer about some of your favorite independent thoughts and unquestionable truths? Better grab hold of some open minded skepticism and take a look: Nothing is easier or more natural — or more difficult to see — than self-delusion.
Differentiated, motivationally discrete, bounded units of consciousness must necessarily evolve a non-overlapping mechanism for communicating or interacting with each other. The most obvious and simplest mechanism would be the direct transfer of discrete thought packets. Information transfer by discrete thought packets can, in one of its forms, be called telepathy. Think of telepathy as adding data to (organizing bits within) someone else’s calculation space.
Each individual bounded consciousness must be able to control the communications flowing in both directions. Incoming data would have to be willfully or intentionally let in or blocked out, while outgoing data must be willfully pushed out and directed to one or more potential receivers. The concept of implementing sentient interactions by transferring discrete thought packets has many implications. One obvious implication is the realization that thought is energy (thought organizes bits), which leads to the further realization that consciousness is energy (consciousness is organized bits). Its potential is the potential to be better organized (creating synergy, improving quality, lowering entropy). An active, aware, loving, bright consciousness system is a very low-entropy energy system. It represents a highly structured or organized energy form that has the ability to do much work, or equivalently, has considerable personal power.
The brighter (more aware) the consciousness system is, the less entropy it contains. Unlike physical (PMR) systems, the entropy of a consciousness system does not have to increase with time. The consciousness spring is not doomed to wind down — it is a frictionless system; entropy can rise or fall based on the activity within the system.
Mass is a highly structured form of energy: Einstein taught us that. He also tried to convince us that all energy was contained within a non- physical unified field, but failed because he could not derive the Big Picture from the little picture. Incredibly, he made it to within one or two belief traps of the right answer but the solution was outside of his (and everybody else’s) cultural reality. He was ahead of his time, and one can only get so far ahead before the logical and conceptual ground disappears beneath one’s feet. The time was not yet ripe for Big TOE discovery.
That consciousness represents the most fundamental energy in our system and that mass is a construct of (as opposed to, “is constructed of”) consciousness is as true as the equivalence between mass and energy, but less widely known. Exactly how mass is experienced through a construct of consciousness is explained later in this section. Consciousness, self-motivated digital organization, is the fundamental energy — actually, the only energy. Everything else that we are familiar with represents a virtual energy causing virtual change within a virtual reality according to the space-time rule-set.
If nothing changes, nothing new can happen. Energy can be defined as having the capacity or ability to make something happen — to produce change. A discrete thought packet not only requires energy to send it out, but the packet itself contains energy (has the ability to change something). It can add new energy as well as new content (information) to the consciousness of the receiver. Within a digital consciousness, the concepts of energy and virtual energy blend together to become indistinguishable at the root. If you prefer to consider AUM and consciousness as virtual energy forms, that’s fine — it makes little practical difference to this very practical trilogy. Virtual vs. real, like nonphysical vs. physical, is relative to your point of view.