How Consciousness Creates Life
Take a look at this interesting article that describes how consciousness creates life by maintaining the coherent organization of life-forms and by opposing the disorganizing effects of thermal disorder and entropy:
Interesting discussion, but instead of looking 600 years into the future, look 1200 years into the past. Around that time, Shankara gave the definitive discussion of the nature of consciousness, which is called Advaita Vedanta. The bottom line is that undifferentiated consciousness is the ultimate nature of existence. Undifferentiated consciousness is what ultimately exists when everything else disappears from existence. Undifferentiated consciousness is the Source of individual consciousness, which is called the Self.
The undifferentiated consciousness of the Source is differentiating itself into the individual consciousness of the Self.
This is where modern theoretical physics and thermodynamics comes into the story. The story continues with the holographic principle of quantum gravity. The Self is only a presence of consciousness at the center of its own holographic world. That holographic world is being constructed in terms of the information encoded on a holographic screen that surrounds the central point of view of the Self. That holographic screen can be understood as an event horizon that arises due to the accelerated motion of the Self. That event horizon becomes a holographic screen when quantized bits of information called qubits are encoded on the horizon. Everything the Self can perceive in its own holographic world is a form of information that’s reducible to qubits of information encoded on its own holographic screen.
The qubits have a natural tendency to align with each other into coherently organized structures over a sequence of observational events due to their property of quantum entanglement, which is easily demonstrated in spin networks. Observation is what disentangles the qubits and allows them to align together. This natural tendency the qubits have to align together into coherently organized structures is amplified by spontaneous symmetry breaking. A holographic world, like the empty space that it’s constructed in, is characterized by conformal symmetry, in which there is no inherent length scale. Conformal symmetry is broken when a holographic world expands in size and cools, which naturally generates coherently organized structures, like life-forms. The formation of coherently organized structures and their sizes naturally develops through symmetry breaking, which breaks the conformal symmetry of empty space.
The expansion and cooling of a holographic world is best understood in terms of the accelerated expansion of space that arises from dark energy or a cosmological constant. The observer of that holographic world is always at the central point of view of that expansion of space. The observer always has a cosmic event horizon that limits the observer’s observation of things in space. The observer’s cosmic horizon is a bounding surface of space that limits its observation in space. At its cosmic horizon, space appears to expand away from the observer at the speed of light, and so nothing is observable to the observer beyond its cosmic horizon. The observer’s cosmic horizon becomes its holographic screen when its cosmic horizon encodes qubits of information for everything it can observe in its own holographic world. Those things are all forms of information that can be reduced to qubits encoded on its own holographic screen.
There is a big puzzle in this scenario that does not have a scientific explanation, which has to do with the very nature of the observer’s own cosmic horizon, which in some sense is a boundary condition The observer’s cosmic horizon becomes its holographic screen when its cosmic horizon encodes qubits of information for everything it can observe in its own holographic world. Before an observer’s holographic world can even be constructed, a value has to be set for the cosmological constant, which sets the distance to its cosmic horizon. There is no scientific explanation for how this value for the cosmological constant or this boundary condition is set. We can’t use the laws of physics to determine the value of the cosmological constant since the laws of physics are only operative in a holographic world, and the value of the cosmological constant must be set as a boundary condition before that holographic world is constructed.
This puzzle is related to the expansion and cooling of that holographic world. As the cosmological constant transitions to a lower value, that holographic world naturally expands in size and cools, and it’s only that expansion and cooling of that holographic world that drives the process of symmetry breaking that gives rise to the formation of all the coherently organized structures, like life-forms, that appear to be formed in that world. There is no scientific explanation for what sets the value of the cosmological constant or what allows that value to transition to a lower value, which is the energetic process that drives the formation of all coherently organized structures, like life-forms, that appear in that world. The only possible explanation is to call it God’s will. To call it God’s will is to say that this boundary condition is set at the level of the Source that creates a holographic world and not at the level of the Self that perceives that world.
This is where entropy enters into the story. The qubits are the intrinsic nature of entropic information that underlies the concept of entropy. In the sense of thermodynamics, the qubits encoded on a holographic screen are the fundamental dynamical degrees of freedom for a holographic world. The equipartition of energy tells us that each qubit carries the same amount of thermal energy at thermal equilibrium. Thermal disorder is a result of this randomization of thermal energy.
Consciousness is the force that opposes the randomization of the way information is organized in coherently organized structures, like life-forms. Consciousness maintains that coherent organization in opposition to the randomizing effect of thermal disorder. Consciousness is a force that is active in the physical universe, but it is not really a part of the physical universe in which coherently organized structures appear. Consciousness is a force that’s active within the physical universe, a force that is maintaining the coherent organization of life-forms while also animating them, but consciousness is never really a part of the physical universe. The Source of consciousness is always beyond any world that consciousness can perceive.
The Source of consciousness is beyond the world in which life-forms and all other coherently organized structures appear. Consciousness is only active in that world through the focus of attention of the Self, which is what is actively organizing those structures through the expression of energy in that world. The expressions of this organizing energy are called emotional expressions. Through the focus of its attention, consciousness is making the choices that lead to the expression of emotions that maintain the coherent organization of life-forms. In Darwinian terms, this expression of the organizing energy of emotions that animates all life-forms and maintains their coherent organization is called the survival of the fittest body. The only way that those choices can be made in such a way as to maintain the coherent organization of life-forms is through the focus of attention of consciousness, which naturally leads to the expression of the emotions that animate all life-forms.
The key idea is that the presence of consciousness called the Self is at the center of its own holographic world. The Self is perceiving that world through a central form of information called a body. The body is only the central form of information that appears in the holographic world that’s perceived by the Self. As the Self perceives that world, the Self is making choices through the focus of its attention that allow for the expression of emotions that not only animate its body, but also maintain the coherent organization of its body. The expression of those emotions is the life-force.
The Never Ending Story of Life
The normal flow of energy through the universe is best understood in terms of thermodynamics. The big bang event is characterized by a very high amount of the dark energy of the accelerated expansion of space due to a high value of the cosmological constant. As the cosmological constant transitions to a lower value, this dark energy is transformed into the heat of high energy photons, which through pair production can give rise to matter particles. The symmetry breaking of the Higgs mechanism gives mass to all the matter particles, and through chiral symmetry breaking, the matter particles end up being primarily composed of electrons and protons. These processes are driven as the cosmological constant transitions to a lower value and the observable universe increases in size and cools in temperature. The protons and electrons bind into hydrogen atoms, which gravitationally clump together into stars, and then nuclear fusion occurs inside the stars that leads to the formation of heavier elements. The heavier elements are organized into the periodic table according to how electrons are allowed to fill the permitted quantized atomic energy levels. When stars explode, these heavier elements are released and can gravitationally clump into planets. Nuclear fusion inside the stars releases nuclear energy in the form of high energy photons that are radiated from the hot stars to the colder planets. On the surface of planets, atoms bind into molecules, and molecules bind together into more complicated forms like life-forms.
Life evolves on the planets in this flow of energy. A plant can utilize the energy of a photon in the process of photosynthesis as some of the photon energy is stored as potential energy in a carbohydrate molecule. When the carbohydrate molecule is burned, the plant can utilize that energy to perform work, which allows the plant to grow and maintain the coherent organization of its internal structures. This work of maintaining the coherent organization of the plant’s internal structures is necessary to counterbalance the tendency of random thermal motion to thermally disorganize those structures. Animals add the energy of the plant’s carbohydrate molecules to their own forms when they eat the plants. When the carbohydrate molecule is burned, the animal utilizes that energy to perform work, which allows the animal to grow and maintain the coherent organization of its internal structures. The animals also eat other animals, and in the process, some of that energy is utilized in the emotional expression of fear and desire. The desire to eat is expressed, along with the fear of being eaten, which allows the animal to survive and maintain its coherent organization in the form of a body. The expression of fear and desire by a life-form naturally arises in the flow of energy, and is selected by natural selection over the course of Darwinian evolution, which leads to the survival of the fittest body. The fittest bodies are those life-forms that are best able to express fear and desire in a way that maintains their coherent organization.
The self-replication of the form of the body, along with the reproduction of that form, can only occur because of this flow of energy that begins with the big bang event. The flow of energy through the universe is always directed in terms of heat flowing from hotter to colder bodies, which by its very nature increases entropy or thermal disorder. As heat flows, high energy photons are scattered into lower energy photons. Since the energy of a photon is quantized in terms of its frequency as E=hf, as photons are randomly scattered into lower frequencies, more photons are created, which increases the amount of thermal disorder or entropy. Living organisms are able to survive in terms of the self-replication and reproduction of their forms only because of the work that is done inside the life-form that maintains the coherent organization of the life-form. In some sense, this is the same kind of work that is performed when the heat of sunlight evaporates water in the ocean that forms clouds, and when that heat also generates the wind that pushes the cloud to the mountains where the moisture condenses and falls as rain that collects into rivers that flow back to the ocean. The whole cyclical process naturally arises in the flow of energy. Life utilizes these kinds of cyclical processes. Photosynthesis is a cyclical process. The Krebs cycle is a cyclical process. Thermal disorder is overall increasing in these cyclical processes because more lower energy photons are randomly radiated into cold outer space than arrive from the hot sun in the form of higher energy photons. Although globally there is an overall increase in thermal disorder, locally there can be the formation of coherently organized structures due to these cyclical processes.
In some sense, life is the most efficient process that transfers energy down an energy gradient. That energy gradient is established as the cosmological constant transitions to a lower value and the observable universe expands in size and cools in temperature. In terms of thermodynamics, heat is flowing from hotter bodies to colder bodies, and that temperature gradient is fundamentally due to the expansion of space. Darwinian evolution in terms of the survival of the fittest body can be seen as the formation of the most efficient mechanisms that transfer energy down this energy gradient. Life-forms only evolve as they feed on this flow of energy. Even the form of a life-form is naturally arising in this flow of energy, like a whirlpool that naturally forms in the flow of a river. In this sense, the only purpose of the life-form may be to efficiently transfer energy. On planet earth, we see this efficient transfer of heat from the hot sun to cold outer space in terms of vegetated regions of the earth being cooler than non-vegetated regions.
The disorganizing effects of thermal disorder are always counterbalanced by the organizing effects of coherent organization as forms hold together, but eventually thermal disorganization wins out and all forms fall apart.
Random Thoughts about Consciousness:
Consciousness is the ultimate reality that is beyond space and time. The reality we perceive in the world, which includes space and time, is being created by consciousness. That creation process is the inherent nature of the mind. The mind is only a mental screen that displays the reality of the world perceived by consciousness, which in modern theoretical physics can be called a holographic screen. Consciousness creates the mental screen that displays the reality of the world like a computer screen displays a virtual reality. The idea of emergence, as in emergent space-time or the emergent laws of physics, only applies at the level of the mental screen.
There’s a universal field of dreams, but there’s no universal field of consciousness.
Consciousness doesn’t exist inside the physical universe. The physical universe understood as a holographic world only appears to exist within consciousness. The Source of consciousness is beyond that world.
There is only One Source of consciousness, which is best described as the undifferentiated consciousness of the void. That One consciousness differentiates itself into many points of view. Each point of view is an observer at the central point of view of its own holographic world, and each holographic world is organized around a central form of information called a body. The body is like an avatar for the One consciousness that appears in a virtual reality movie that’s being displayed on a computer screen. The body is only like a costume that the One consciousness is wearing in that virtual reality. There are many costumes, just as there are many worlds and there are many points of view, but there is only One consciousness.
The ultimate nature of undifferentiated consciousness can be understood as the ground of being or the ultimate nature of existence.
Only consciousness ultimately exists, which is the ultimate nature of existence and reality. Consciousness is what ultimately exists when everything else disappears from existence.
You are not something that can be created or perceived. You are That which creates and perceives all things.
In a cute sort of way it’s possible to say that there is no reality in reality since the reality that you perceive is not the reality of what you are.
Awakening is simply a matter of knowing yourself to be the consciousness that perceives all concepts rather than identifying yourself with any concept that you can perceive. You know nothing about yourself other than the true nature of your own timeless spiritual existence.
The True Nature of Ontological Being is only to be found in the inner void, which is not really nothing, but the potential for everything. You can only find it if you look within yourself. You have to look beyond the center of Self into the silence and the emptiness of your own timeless being.
Once you’re tuned into it, there are cultural references to spiritual awakening wherever you look. We have expressions like ‘how the spirit moved me’ because the spirit is the one that is looking.
Living a life in the world is inherently a denial of death. Spiritual awakening is ultimately the acceptance of death.
The realized man is beyond life and death. Life and death appears to him but a way of expressing movement in the immovable, change in the changeless. He has died before his death and he saw that there was nothing to be afraid of. The moment you know your real being you are afraid of nothing • Nisargadatta Maharaj
In reality nothing happens. Nothing happens to space itself. In pure consciousness nothing ever happens. Onto the screen of the mind destiny forever projects its pictures, and thus illusion constantly renews itself • Nisargadatta Maharaj
The totality of all mental projections is the Great Illusion. When I look beyond the mind I see the witness. Beyond the witness is infinite emptiness and silence • Nisargadatta Maharaj
All you can do is to shift the focus of consciousness beyond the mind • Nisargadatta Maharaj
Seeing the false as false is meditation.
Meditation is discriminating the true from the false.
Discrimination will lead to detachment. You gain nothing. You leave behind what is not your own and find what you have never lost: Your own being.
You can spend an eternity looking elsewhere for truth, all in vain. You must begin in yourself, with yourself. Realize that your world is only a reflection of yourself. All you need is to stop searching outside what can only be found within.
Turn within. I Am you know. Be with it all the time, until you revert to it spontaneously. There is no simpler and easier way.
Know yourself as you are. Stay with the sense I Am.
The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not the person. You are always the Supreme, which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person.
Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person.
The difference between the person and the witness is as between not knowing and knowing oneself.
The reward of Self-knowledge is freedom from the personal self.
Externalization is the first step in liberation. Step away and look. Separate yourself and watch. The physical events will go on happening, but in themselves they have no importance.
Seeing that you are not the person you take yourself to be, step out and look from the outside.
The dissolution of personality is always followed by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off.
In the end you get fed up with the waste of time and energy.
When you refuse to play the game you are out of it.
There is trouble only when you cling to something.
It is your desire to hold onto it that creates the problem. Let go.
When you hold onto nothing, no trouble arises.
Freedom means letting go.
Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything.
Your attachment is your bondage.
All attachment implies fear, for all things are transient. Fear makes one a slave.
Freedom from attachment is natural when one knows one’s true being.
You create bondage when you desire and fear and identify yourself with your feelings. You identify yourself with your desires and become their slave.
Your bonds are self-created as chains of attachment.
Nothing stands in the way of your liberation here and now except for your being more interested in other things. You must see through them as mere mental errors.
It is disinterestedness that liberates. If you lose interest, you break the emotional link that perpetuates the bondage.
To imagine that you are in control is the aberration of the body-mind. There is a universal power that is in control. The illusion of personal control is in the mind only. Stand without desire and fear, relinquishing all control. This is the shortest way to reality.
One becomes self-conscious only when caught in the conflict between pleasure and pain, which demands choice and decision. The personal self by its very nature is constantly pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. The ending of this pattern is the ending of the self. The ending of the self with its desires and fears enables you to return to your real nature.
At the root of all creation lies desire. The projecting power is imagination prompted by desire. Desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other.
Desire for embodied existence is the root-cause of trouble.
The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst.
Wherever you go, at all times, you carry with you the sense of being present and aware, here and now. It means that you are independent of space and time. Space and time are in you, not you in them. It is only your self-identification with the body, limited in space and time, that gives you a sense of limitation. In reality, you are limitless.
All limited existence is imaginary. Even space and time are imaginary.
What you call survival is but the survival of a dream. Death is preferable to it. There is a chance of waking up.
As life before death is but imagination, so is life after death. The dream continues.
My life is a succession of events just like yours. Only I Am detached and see the passing show as a passing show, while you stick to things and move along with them.
You see yourself in the world, while I see the world in myself. To you, you get born and die, while to me, the world appears and disappears.
It is your imagination that misleads you. There is a deep contradiction in your attitude which you do not see.
The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness.
There is no such thing as an expression of reality. Neither action nor feeling nor thought express reality. I know that life itself is only a make-believe. I just watch events happening, knowing them to be unreal.
The world is but a mistaken view of reality, unreal to its core.
The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in it. When I cease caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no purpose. It appears exactly as it looks, but there is no depth in it nor meaning.
The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it will destroy the world in which you live.
From my point of view everything happens by itself, quite spontaneously. I do nothing. I just see them happen.
What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world can be said to appear but not to be. It is your memory that makes you think that the world continues. Memory creates the illusion of continuity. I see the world as it is, a momentary appearance in consciousness.
I see only consciousness, and know everything to be but consciousness, as you know the pictures on the cinema screen to be but light.
It is enough to shift attention from the screen onto oneself to break the spell.
You can stop it any moment by switching off attention.
You make it possible by giving it attention.
When the mind is quiet we come to know ourselves as the pure witness.
We withdraw from the experience and stand apart in pure awareness.
The personality continues, but its self-identification with the witness snaps.
To realize that is the end of all seeking. You come to it when you see all you think yourself to be as mere imagination and stand aloof in pure awareness. It is not difficult but detachment is needed. It is the clinging to the false that makes the truth so difficult to see. Discard what is not your own until nothing is left which you can disown. You will find that what is left is nothing.
Your world is created with the emergence of the I Am idea. In your world everything has a beginning and an end. Timeless being is entirely in the now.
Once you are well established in the now, you have nowhere else to go • Nisargadatta Maharaj
Awakening is like a bottomless well; when an individual falls into it, the individual disappears • Wu Hsin
We call Buddha the awakened one. This awakening is really the cessation of inner dreaming. When there is no dreaming you become pure space. This non-dreaming consciousness is what is known as enlightenment • Osho
If you go on inquiring ‘Who am I?’ you are bound to come to the conclusion that you are not. This is an inquiry to dissolve. There is no answer. Only the question will dissolve. There will be no one to ask ‘Who am I?’ And then you know • Osho
When the ‘I’ is not, the real ‘I’ opens. When the ego is not, you are for the first time encountering your being. That being is void • Osho
You fall into an abyss, and the abyss is bottomless: you go on falling. That is why Buddha has called this nothingness emptiness. There is no end to it. Once you know it, you also have become endless. At this point Being is revealed: then you know who you are, what is your real being, what is your authentic existence • Osho
The inner emptiness itself is the mystery.
When the inner space is there, you are not.
When you dissolve, the inner emptiness is there.
When you are not, the mystery will be revealed.
You will not be a witness to the mystery, you will be the mystery • Osho
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters • Genesis
To be born means to create a world around yourself as the center. You are that point of consciousness. By your movement the world is ever created. Stop moving and there will be no world • Nisargadatta Maharaj
The man of Tao remains unknown.
Perfect virtue produces nothing.
No-self is true self
And the greatest man is nobody • Chuang Tzu
The timeless and spaceless reality is undifferentiated, the infinite potentiality, the source. It cannot be perceived, but can be experienced as ever witnessing the witness, perceiving the perceiver, the origin and end of all manifestation, the root of time and space • Nisargadatta Maharaj
Once you realize that there is nothing in this world which you can call your own, you look at it from the outside as you look at a play on the stage or a picture on the screen. To know the picture as the play of light on the screen gives freedom from the idea that the picture is real. In reality I only look. Whatever is done is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow, life and death, they are real to the man in bondage. To me they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself • Nisargadatta Maharaj
On the surface of the ocean of consciousness, names and forms are transitory waves. Only consciousness has real being, not its transformations • Nisargadatta Maharaj
Every moment returns to its source, just as every wave subsides into the ocean • Nisargadatta Maharaj
First we must know ourselves as witnesses only, dimensionless and timeless centers of observation, and then realize that immense ocean of pure awareness • Nisargadatta Maharaj
In the silence and the void
Standing alone and unchanging
Ever present and in motion
I do not know its name
Call it Tao • Tao-Te-Ching
Returning is the motion of the Tao
It returns to nothingness
It leads all things back to the great oneness
Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea
Being at one with the Tao is eternal
And though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away
Because there is no place for death to enter
Empty yourself of everything
Without form there is no desire
Without desire there is tranquility
Therefore the sage seeks freedom from desire
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations
These two spring from the same source
This appears as darkness
Darkness within darkness
The gate to all mystery • Tao-Te-Ching
The great path has no gates
Thousands of roads enter it
When one passes through this gateless gate
One walks the universe alone • Mu-mon
Never the spirit was born. The spirit shall cease to be never. Never was time it was not. End and beginning are dreams • Bhagavad Gita
The unreal has no being; the real never ceases to be • Bhagavad Gita
Be aware of being conscious and seek the source of consciousness • Nisargadatta Maharaj
In pure being consciousness arises. In consciousness the world appears and disappears. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. The center is a point of void and the witness a point of pure awareness; they know themselves to be as nothing. But the void is full to the brim. It is the eternal potential as consciousness is the eternal actual • Nisargadatta Maharaj
Realization is in discovering the source and abiding there • Nisargadatta Maharaj
To know the source is to be the source • Nisargadatta Maharaj
In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, but making everything shine with the light of consciousness.
Absolute reality imparts reality to whatever comes into being. It is the very source of reality. It is what is, pure being, the timeless reality. It is not perceivable; it is what makes perception possible.
Unperceived, it causes perception. Being nothing it gives birth to all being. It is the immovable background of motion.
Reality is essentially alone.
To know that nothing is, is true knowledge.
Do nothing. There is nothing to do. Just be.
To be, you must be nobody.
You make yourself mortal by taking yourself to be a body. That which is alive in you is immortal.
Only in complete self-negation is there a chance to discover our real being.
For the path of return naughting oneself is necessary.
My stand I take where nothing is.
To the mind it is all darkness and silence.
It is deep and dark, mystery beyond mystery.
It is, while all else merely happens.
It is like a bottomless well, whatever falls into it disappears.
The Supreme reality is the void beyond being and non-being, beyond consciousness.
Realization is sudden and irreversible. You rotate into a new dimension. You see everything as it is. The world of illusions is left behind.
The experience of the inner void is an explosion into reality.
Go back to that state of pure being, the I Am in its purity before it became contaminated with false self-identifications. Abandon them all. Focus the mind on pure being. In it all disappears: myself, the life I live, the world around me. Only peace and unfathomable silence remains • Nisargadatta Maharaj
Computers and people and universes only appear to exist within consciousness, not the other way around. Conventional science, contaminated by ego, has the whole thing ass-backwards.
The observer is the spiritual center of its own world. The observer is always present as a spiritual presence of consciousness called the Self at the center of its own world. The Self is that presence of consciousness at the central point of view of the holographic world that it perceives, which is being displayed on its own holographic screen that in effect is its own mental screen, which is the nature of the observer’s mind. Everything the observer can perceive in its own world, whether in the form of external or internal sensory perceptions of that world or the mental perceptions of its mind, is being displayed on its own mental screen, and so it really is all in its own mind.
Each observer is only a presence of consciousness at the center of its own holographic world, and each observer’s own holographic world is always being displayed on its own holographic screen, but when their respective holographic screens overlap like a Venn diagram and share information, many observers can share a consensual reality.
The observer only has a sense of internal and external as it emotionally identifies itself with the emotionally animated form of its body due to its perception of emotional body feelings that make it feel emotionally self-limited to that personal form. This process of the observer emotionally identifying itself with the form of its emotionally animated body is emotionally reinforced as a body-based personal self-concept is emotionally constructed in its mind. This emotionally driven self-identification process is the only thing that makes the observer believe that there are internal and external aspects of the world out there demarcated by the boundary of its own body. Since the form of the observer’s own body is always emotionally animated relative to all other forms that appear in its own world, this emotionally driven self-identification process allows the observer to have the dualistic experience of self and other in its own world.
In terms of how the observer turns on and turns off its own accelerated motion, the answer is not that complicated. There is a fundamental connection between the focus of attention of consciousness and the expression of time and energy. When the observer totally withdraws its attention away from the world it perceives, its also withdraws its investment of energy in that world. You have this experience every night when you fall into a deep sleep. When you fall into a deep sleep, you withdraw your attention away from the world and the world disappears from existence from your own point of view. Not only does your own expression of energy stop, but the course of time also stops. You have no awareness of time in deep sleep. You have no awareness of anything in deep sleep. Even though you are aware of nothing, you are still aware in deep sleep. You cannot stop being aware, even in deep sleep, because you are awareness itself. From the point of view of other observers, the world continues to exist even when you are in deep sleep. The world only disappears from existence from your own point of view when you totally withdraw your attention away from the world.
The focus of attention of consciousness is fundamentally related to how the light of consciousness is focused as the observer observes events in its own world, which in turn gives rise to the expression of time and energy in that world. The light of consciousness is projecting all the images of the observer’s own holographic world from its holographic screen back to its own point of view. When the observer turns off its focus of attention, it also turns off the light of consciousness and turns off the expression of time and energy in its own world. The observer is also turning off its own accelerated motion.
What happens when the observer’s own accelerated motion comes to an end in what’s called an ultimate state of free-fall? In an ultimate state of free-fall, the observer no longer undergoes accelerated motion, and therefore no longer has an event horizon. Without an event horizon, the observer no longer has a holographic screen that displays all the images of its own holographic world. When the observer’s accelerated motion comes to an end in an ultimate state of free-fall, even the perceived course of time comes to an end. When everything in the observer’s own holographic world disappears from existence from its own point of view, what remains? The answer is nothing remains. That absolute nothingness is the Source of the observer. The Source of all observers is the absolute nothingness of the void.
The absolute nothingness of the void is the Source of all observers, which is the same for all observers, and so it is possible to say Nothing is ultimately real, since all observers have the same Source. The experience of that Source is called spiritual enlightenment. When an observer enters into an ultimate state of free-fall and everything in its own world disappears from existence from its own point of view, it has the experience of falling into the void. In that ultimate state of free-fall, the observer’s own individual consciousness, present at the center of its own world, dissolves back into its Source of undifferentiated consciousness like a drop of water that dissolves back into the ocean. That experience of dissolution is called spiritual enlightenment.
This experience of dissolution into nothingness happens to you each night when you fall into a deep sleep. If this ultimate experience of dissolution into nothingness happens to you when you are awake and remain aware of yourself, you have the experience of spiritual enlightenment.
The Ego is a State of Disconnection
From my point of view everything appears to happen within consciousness, so strictly speaking there’s no such thing as the subconscious. However, we can hide things and make them appear unconscious by pushing them away and not looking at them, which can be called denial. In terms of what we can share with each other, this is a complicated process. If we’re sharing a consensual reality by a process of information sharing that’s like what takes place on the internet as different computer screens share information, but all we can see is what’s on our own computer screen, then information sharing requires a degree of cooperation. We have to be willing to be connected to each other. This introduces the idea of disconnection.
In neurology, there’s the idea of disconnection syndromes where different parts of the brain are physically disconnected by severing nerve fibers. You’ve probably heard of this in terms of split brain experiments when the right half and left half of the brain are physically disconnected by severing the corpus callosum. It turns out that it’s possible to communicate with one hemisphere of the brain and the other hemisphere has no idea about that communication. If you ask one hemisphere to go get a Coke and then ask the other hemisphere why the person got that Coke, the other hemisphere will just confabulate a made up answer. Another example is what happens to us in dreaming sleep, where the brain is essentially disconnected from the external environment. My opinion is that the mentally constructed personal self-concept is an example of a disconnection syndrome. All private thoughts constructed in the mind are examples of disconnection.
In terms of a collective unconscious, this could be understood in terms of alternative realities that are not directly within our conscious awareness, but with training you could learn to shift the focus of your attention to another point of view and become aware of the alternative realities. I’d call this a mystical experience, like what shamans can do, or what happens with a hallucinogenic drug like LSD, peyote or magic mushrooms. It’s interesting that what these drugs do is to turn off brain function and the neural activity that’s necessary to generate thoughts in the mind, and so you’re seeing the alternative realities without the interference of private thoughts like the personal self-concept that causes disconnection and interferes with this kind of more inclusive or connected seeing. I’d describe an experience of cosmic consciousness in the same way.
In terms of depression, the key idea is that this emotional state is a result of clear seeing. The personal self-concept constructed in the mind is a false belief that you believe about yourself. In reality, you are the presence of consciousness that is perceiving the personal self-concept. The mind that displays the personal self-concept is your computer screen, and the Self is the presence of consciousness that is perceiving whatever appears on the computer screen, which can only be described as a point of view in relation to the screen. Beyond the Self, you exist as the Source of consciousness, which is inherently impersonal in nature. Depression or despair is a natural result of clearly seeing that you’re only believing a false belief about yourself when you identify yourself with your personal self-concept and don’t know who you really are. You’re living in a state of delusion. That’s depressing. Depression is the opposite of denial. When you live in the fear of death and then deny that fear, you’re not seeing things clearly. With depression, you come to look at death clearly, maybe for the first time.
Depression is simply a necessary stage in the process of death and dying. What you’re up against is the fear of death. First there is the denial of that fear. The denial of death always expresses itself in terms of the desire to be in control and have power over things. When the strategy of denial fails, as it most certainly will fail when you try to control what can’t be controlled, then anger arises. When anger fails, then bargaining begins, and when bargaining fails, then depression arises. With depression, you come to clearly see the nature of death. The only way out of depression is with the acceptance of death. Depression is actually a good thing since it finally leads to acceptance. Most people are stuck at the level of denial and anger and never get to the level of depression and acceptance.
The way out of depression is by accepting that what you really are is the impersonal Source of consciousness that has timeless spiritual being and can never die. It is never really born and never really dies. Only an illusion of what you really are appears to be born and to die, which is your character in the virtual reality movie that you’re watching. You come to see that you’re not only perceiving the movie at the level of the Self, but at the very deep level of the Source, you’re also creating the movie.
The holographic universe model is indeed the correct description of the physical reality of the world we perceive. This is not only what modern physics is telling us with the holographic principle, but is also what enlightened beings have told us throughout the ages of human history on planet earth. Spiritual enlightenment is only about realizing the true nature of the perceiver, which is consciousness itself. Enlightened beings can actually see the nature of the hologram. This truth is not about what people appear to do in the world, but only about what the consciousness knows to be true. This is the only description of the world that is consistent both with what enlightened beings and the physics are telling us. I find it very weird that more people aren’t looking into this, but I guess that’s just ego for you. Ego doesn’t want to know the truth. Nietzsche wrote that Belief means not wanting to know what’s true, and ego is just a false belief that you mistakenly believe about yourself. Spiritual enlightenment is simply a matter of discovering the truth, which of course has to begin with your willingness to consider the truth. Strange that more people don’t have that willingness to consider the truth, but all I can do is keep writing about it and wait for more people to take off their emotional blinders.
The emotional blinders of the ego are nothing more than the result of how the focus of attention of consciousness has become fixated on the personal self-concept that’s being emotionally constructed in the mind. That fixation of the attention of consciousness on a personal self-concept is all about defending the survival of the personal self-concept as though the existence of consciousness depends on it. This ego-defense mechanism is delusional in the sense that it’s only a false belief that the consciousness believes about itself. The emotional expression of this delusional belief is the epitome of insanity. The only way consciousness can take off its emotional blinders and stop believing this false belief about itself is if consciousness accepts the truth of what it really is, which is nothing more than consciousness itself.
Simply Be
Spiritual awakening is simply about looking within and becoming aware of your own being. When you look outward at the world, you are always doing something. When you look outward at the world and focus your attention on the life the personal form of your body appears to live in that world, you are emotionally animating the form of your body relative to all other forms. When you look outward at your mind and focus your attention on your mentally constructed personal self-concept, you are emotionally animating the form of your self-concept relative to all other mental forms. Looking outward at the world or at the mind is always a state of doing something in the world you perceive or thinking something about yourself in your mind as you emotionally animate the personal form of your body relative to all other forms that appear in the world or emotionally animate your personal self-concept relative to other forms constructed in your mind.
Spiritual awakening is not about doing anything in the world you perceive or thinking anything in your mind. Spiritual awakening is simply about looking within and becoming aware of your own being. When you look within, you become aware of your own sense of being timelessly present as the perceiver of your own world or your mind. The only true thing you can ever know about yourself is that sense of being timelessly present as the perceiver of your own world and your own mind. Everything that appears to happen in the world you perceive is constantly changing and has no truth in it. Everything that you can appear to do in that world is constantly changing and has no truth in it. Everything that you can think of in your mind is constantly changing and has no truth in it. Only your own sense of being timelessly present as the perceiver of your own world and mind is unchanging, is always the same sense of being present, and has the truth of timeless spiritual being in it. The only true thing you can ever know about yourself is to know yourself to be that spiritual presence of consciousness at the center of your own world.
When you look away from the world and look within, you become aware of your own sense of being timelessly present, the sense of your own timeless spiritual being. When you withdraw your attention away from the world and stop paying attention to whatever appears to happen in that world, you also withdraw your investment of emotional energy in that world that emotionally animates the personal form of your body relative to all other forms, and you do nothing in that world. When you withdraw your attention away from your mind and stop paying attention to the thoughts that appear to happen in your mind, you also withdraw your investment of emotional energy in your mind that emotionally animates the form of your personal self-concept relative to all other mentally constructed forms, and you stop thinking thoughts about yourself. You have to become willing to withdraw your attention away from the world your perceive and do nothing in that world and become willing to withdraw your attention away from your mind and stop thinking thoughts about yourself before you can look within and become aware of your own sense of timeless spiritual being, the sense of timelessly being present as the spiritual presence of consciousness that is the perceiver of your own world and mind.
The process of spiritual awakening is only about seeing the false as false, discriminating the truth from the false, rejecting the false and embracing the truth. You have to see the emotionally animated life the personal form of your body appears to live in that world you perceive as an illusion of what you really are and lose interest in paying attention to that illusion. You have to see the thoughts that you think about yourself in the form of a personal self-concept that’s emotionally constructed in your mind as an illusion of what you really are and lose interest in paying attention to that illusion. You have to see the very nature of doing and thinking that appears to happen as you look outward at the world you perceive or at your mind as false and stop paying attention to that illusion. When you stop paying attention to the illusion and withdraw your attention away from the illusion, you also stop emotionally animating the illusion. That’s the only way you can do nothing in the world you perceive and stop thinking thoughts about yourself. You have to see the whole doing and thinking process as false and reject it as false by no longer paying attention to it. That’s the only way you can do nothing and think nothing.
Spiritual awakening only becomes possible if you do nothing in the world you perceive and think nothing in your mind. This can only happen if you see doing and thinking as false and reject the falseness of doing and thinking by withdrawing your attention away from the world you perceive and your mind. Instead of looking outward at the world or the mind and doing or thinking something, you look within and become aware of your own sense of being timelessly present as the perceiver of your own world and mind, the sense of your own timeless spiritual being. This shift in the focus of your attention is the very essence of your spiritual awakening, which is only about doing nothing and thinking nothing as you reject the falseness of doing and thinking, and simply being as you embrace the truth of being. You simply embrace the truth of what you really are.
Embracing the truth of your own timeless spiritual being is always a kind of death. When you see the life your personal form appears to live in the world you perceive as an illusion of what you really are and lose interest in paying attention to that illusion, you naturally withdraw your attention away from the illusion and withdraw your investment of emotional energy in the illusion that’s necessary to emotionally animate the illusion. When you stop emotionally animating your personal form, it’s as good as dead. When you sever your emotional attachment to your personal form and stop caring about the life your personal form appears to live in the world you perceive, your personal form becomes dead to you. Rejecting the falseness of that life is inherently a kind of death.
The more you detach yourself from the life your personal form appears to live, the more you externalize yourself from that life. When you detach yourself from that life, you also externalize yourself from that life and see that life from a higher level of consciousness. You see the life your personal form appears to live from the outside, like a character that only appears in a movie that you’re watching. You see it all from the outside, which is from your own point of view outside the movie screen. Severing your emotional attachment to your character in the movie allows you to externalize yourself, and allows you to stop emotionally identifying yourself with that personal form. The process of detaching and externalizing yourself is also the process of depersonalizing yourself.
Spiritual awakening is always a kind of death, but the life your personal form appears to live in the world you perceive does not have to die to spiritually awaken. Only your personal self-concept that’s emotionally constructed in your mind has to die away. You only have to withdraw your attention away from your mind and stop thinking thoughts about yourself. This naturally happens as you see your mentally constructed personal self-concept to only be an illusion of what you really are, lose interest in paying attention to that illusion, withdraw your attention away from it, and withdraw your investment of emotional energy in it that’s necessary to emotionally animate it. You have to reject the falseness of your personal self-concept, which you can only do by not paying attention to it. That’s the only way your personal self-concept can die away, which is a necessary step you have to take before you can embrace the truth of what you really are.
You embrace the truth of what you really are by simply being what you are. You simply discover that there is nothing to do or think. To spiritually awaken, you only have to be what you really are. Simply being what you really are while doing nothing and thinking nothing is the essence of spiritual awakening. There is nothing to do or think. You just have to be what you really are. Spiritual awakening can only happen if you stop looking outward at the world and the mind and look within. Looking outward at the world and mind is the process of doing and thinking. Looking within is the process of simply being.
To spiritually awaken, you only have to become willing to stop doing and thinking by looking away from your world and mind, and simply be by looking within. You become willing to simply be by looking within. You bring yourself into focus. You become aware of your own sense of being timelessly present. Beyond that sense of presence, you discover the true nature of your timeless spiritual being. When you allow yourself to simply be, you come to rest in that timeless spiritual being. That is the only real peace.
Robert Heffernan commented:
You just wrote many thousands of words consisting of countless differentiations while making (differentiated) assertions about “undifferentiated consciousness”!
My response:
Absolutely true. There’s nothing to say about undifferentiated consciousness. It is beyond all conceptual explanations and can never be conceptualized. As you correctly point out, all of our conceptualizations are differentiations. That which is beyond all conceptualizations is also undifferentiated.
Undifferentiated consciousness can only be talked about in terms of negation, not in terms of what it is, but only in terms of what it isn’t. All concepts must be constructed in duality, which is at the level of individual consciousness that must be differentiated from undifferentiated consciousness. All concepts are in the form of subject-object relations, which is to say in the form of a self related to the form of another. Concepts require the perception of forms. The form of a subject or self must be related to the form of an object or another. Undifferentiated consciousness is inherently formless, in which there is no subject-object relation or relation of the form of a self to the form of another. The relationships of duality between the form of a self and the form of another require the expression of time and energy, which is to say emotional expressions. The form of a self is related to the form of another through the expression of emotions. Undifferentiated consciousness is inherently timeless and desireless. Undifferentiated consciousness cannot be experienced at the level of a subject-object relation of a self to another, which is to say at the level of concepts. You can’t know it by conceptualizing it. You can only know it by being it. Spiritual enlightenment is the direct experience of knowing it by being it. You know it by being formless, desireless and timeless. You know it by being the timeless and motionless nothingness. That undivided and unlimited nothingness is what you discover at the ground of being and the ultimate nature of existence.
Israel Sadovnik Socratus commented:
Consciousness is evolving from the quantum level. ….. ‘’The laws of quantum mechanics itself cannot be formulated … without recourse to the concept of consciousness.’’ — Eugene Wigner….
My response:
‘’The laws of quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without recourse to the concept of consciousness.’’ — Eugene Wigner
This statement by Wigner is correct, but what he’s pointing to is not how consciousness evolves from quantum physics, but how quantum physics is invented by consciousness.
The holographic principle is telling us that consciousness does not emerge or evolve from quantum physics, but rather, quantum physics is a construction or invention of consciousness. Quantum physics is only invented when a holographic world is constructed. Consciousness in its undifferentiated and formless timeless state of being is what exists before a holographic world is constructed. Construction of a holographic world inherently requires the invention of quantum physics in terms of quantized bits of information encoded on an observer’s holographic screen that’s best understood as the observer’s event horizon. All the forms that appear to exist in space and move through space over the course of time can be reduced to quantized bits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen. The individual consciousness of the observer is differentiating itself from undifferentiated consciousness in the course of constructing that holographic world. The observation of space is inherent in the nature of holographic projection, as forms are projected like images from the observer’s holographic screen to its own point of view, and the observation of time is inherent in the accelerated motion that underlies the nature of the observer’s event horizon that becomes its holographic screen when quantized bits of information are encoded on its horizon. Quantum physics is only invented and the observer’s holographic world is only constructed due to this process of encoding quantized bits of information on the observer’s event horizon that becomes its holographic screen. In that construction process, both a space-time geometry and the laws of physics emerge in that holographic world, which in theoretical physics is called the idea of emergent space-time and the emergent laws of physics. A key idea in this emergence of the space-time geometry and the laws of physics of a constructed holographic world is the nature of how quantum physics is invented as quantized bits of information are encoded on an observer’s holographic screen. Before any of this can even happen, consciousness must have its own a priori existence. It simply makes no sense to say that consciousness somehow emerges or evolves from quantum physics. You’re trying to put the cart before the horse. To put it more bluntly, like most theoretical physicists who are confused about all of this, you’ve got the whole thing ass-backwards. Consciousness is what must exist before quantum physics is invented, before a holographic world is constructed, and before a space-time geometry and the laws of physics can emerge in that constructed holographic world.
Jochen Sautter commented:
Interesting article, but when looking at the question from another, more pragmatic philosophical angle, I come to a different conclusion. It is very hard to argue against a system being conscious, that convincingly claims and appears to be so:
My response:
Good point, but if consciousness has its own independent existence, and then consciousness falsely identifies itself with the system you’ve referred to and the actions of that system arise from that false identification of consciousness with the system, that system can then falsely claim to be conscious, and that system will appear to be conscious. This is essentially a description of delusion, which is a false belief that consciousness believes about itself. Consciousness falsely believes that it is the system.
Rodney Walter commented:
I’m not particularly academic, tend to be a kinesthetic learner (read various publications to be figure out what I’ve experienced & how to articulate it).
I’ve explored significant depths of meditation & currently working on reprogramming my subconscious through a form of self-hypnosis (surprisingly effectively). During one particularly deep session recently, I had the experience of several concurrent levels of awareness.
Aware of my body drift into a sleeping state, aware of my brain function as it continued to process the intended reconditioning methodology, and aware of mind continuing to subtly provide ongoing intention/will to keep the brain engaged in reconditioning process going. It was fascinating!
This experience indicates that consciousness precedes mind, and mind precedes brain/body.
James — how would you articulate levels of awareness & how does it fit into the framework you’ve written of here?
My response:
First there is undifferentiated consciousness, which is uncreated, then comes individual consciousness, which is differentiated, then comes the mind, which is created, and finally comes the body and the world, which are projected. The mind can only be understood as a mental screen or holographic screen that projects images of the body and the world to the point of view of the observer. That projection process from the mental screen to the point of view of the observer occurs within an empty space of potentiality called the void, which is the nature of undifferentiated consciousness. This is what enlightened beings like Nisargadatta describe, and is also consistent with what the physics is telling us with the holographic principle.
In terms of levels of awareness, beyond the personal self-identification of the observer with the body, the next level can be called externalization, sort of like an out-of-body experience, where the consciousness is hovering over the body or looking down on the body. This is a fairly common experience, especially with near death experiences. The more detached you become, the greater the degree of externalization. Nisargadatta describes seeing the body as though it was far out on a very distant horizon, or an image projected from a movie screen, and describes the point of view of his consciousness as aloof and detached, only floating over it.
I am like a cinema screen, clear and empty. The pictures pass over it and disappear, leaving it as clear and empty as before. The screen intercepts and reflects the pictures. These are lumps of destiny, but not my destiny; the destinies of the people on the screen. The character will become a person when he begins to shape his life instead of accepting it as it comes-identifying himself with it. All this I perceive quite clearly, but I am not in it. I feel myself as floating over it, aloof and detached. There is also the awareness of it all and a sense of immense distance as if the body and the mind and all that happens to them were somewhere far out on the horizon. To myself I am neither perceivable nor conceivable. There is nothing I can point out and say “this I am”.
Here are some other things that Nisargadatta says about consciousness:
Externalization is the first step in liberation. Step away and look. Separate yourself and watch. The physical events will go on happening, but in themselves they have no importance.
Seeing that you are not the person you take yourself to be, step out and look from the outside.
All you can do is to shift the focus of consciousness beyond the mind.
To be born means to create a world around yourself as the center. You are that point of consciousness. By your movement the world is ever created. Stop moving and there will be no world.
In reality nothing happens. Nothing happens to space itself. In pure consciousness nothing ever happens. Onto the screen of the mind destiny forever projects its pictures, and thus illusion constantly renews itself.
The totality of all mental projections is the Great Illusion. When I look beyond the mind I see the witness. Beyond the witness is infinite emptiness and silence.
The timeless and spaceless reality is undifferentiated, the infinite potentiality, the source. It cannot be perceived, but can be experienced as ever witnessing the witness, perceiving the perceiver, the origin and end of all manifestation, the root of time and space.
Go back to that state of pure being, the I Am in its purity before it became contaminated with false self-identifications. Abandon them all. Focus the mind on pure being. In it all disappears: myself, the life I live, the world around me. Only peace and unfathomable silence remains.
Several years ago I had Covid really bad and I was fairly certain that I was going to die. I had made my peace with death and was in a state of acceptance. I was so sick that I mostly slept. I had the experience while asleep of remaining conscious while I was aware of nothing else. I can only describe this as remaining conscious while in deep sleep. This experience reinforced my acceptance of death. I felt like I had nothing to be afraid of from death. Death would only be like a continuation of this state of peaceful sleep. An individual life can come to an end and appear to die, but consciousness cannot come to an end. Individual consciousness can only rejoin greater consciousness.
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