Category Archives: Classic Bill

What is Consciousness made out of?

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Originally posted August 4, 2011

This may seem like an academic question yet it leads directly to the meaning of life. Who among us has not pondered the meaning of life at one time or another?

We know consciousness is real, we know it exists. As René Descartes said, “Je pense, donc je suis” — I think, therefore I exist — meaning that you dear reader know something exists because you are experiencing something right now. Rene might have said “something is being experienced, that is what can be stated with certainty”.

In fact nothing can actually be stated with such great certainty except that consciousness — that which experiences — exists.

So what is this stuff that exists? You and I both experience It.

It is the weirdest stuff around. Everything else is easier for our minds (consciousness itself) to grasp. That too is weird — consciousness finds itself weirder than everything else that it experiences, at least among the scientists who have dodged this question while ironically basing everything else in their cosmology upon the observer — which is the same “Self”/”Consciousness” that science has avoided investigating more deeply.

Matter, energy, time and space seem perfectly normal and reasonable to us. Those are names that we put on aspects of what we experience. Names seem normal and reasonable too. Just not consciousness — it is so ineffable, so hard to grasp, to even think about.

Scientists either avoid the subject entirely or else try to reduce consciousness to events in the brain. The late great physicist Evan Harris Walker in his book The Physics of Consciousness brilliantly posited that consciousness emerges from quantum effects at the synapses of the brain. This however has nothing to do with the experience of consciousness. It is the experience itself that we are interested in, not in how we might explain away these experiences by relating them to physical events. The latter explanations beg the question of which came first — i.e. consciousness could have created the brain rather than vice versa — and although we are culturally biased to consider that sequence absurd, there is no scientific evidence either way. It would be the definition of unscientific to take any position under those circumstances.

Those locked into cultural first assumptions are by definition unable to see past those assumptions or to even see that those assumptions exist.

Try this if you will: focus your mind on the experience of consciousness for a moment. What is it?

To ask what consciousness is made of is itself evidence of our predisposition to assume that substance — matter or energy — is the substrate of the universe, so that everything in the universe must be made out of either matter or energy. This is just a bias.

But let’s play along with that bias for awhile. Is consciousness an energy? Okay, if so, then what is energy? Simply saying that energy is a force or a force field is just replacing one name with another — it does not tell us anything, it adds no new information — we are just playing with words.

Today scientists relate to energy in terms of waves radiating from a source. That itself is an ancient metaphor to waves on the ocean. Scientists assumed for a long time (some still do today) that waves must be waves in something. In Newton’s time the term aether (“ether”) was the stuff the waves were waving. By Einstein’s time and our own the concept of an aether has become passé. Today we are more comfortable thinking that things reduce ultimately to wavicles — things that have both a wave and a particle aspect depending on the choice of instruments and experimental conditions the observer chooses to set up.

Do you begin to see The Great Circular Argument going on here? Really the modeling of “what is” falls back on the way we as humans perceive the world and the ultimate categories we place as contexts around everything else — the way we perceive time and space — the apparent hardness of matter — which we now know is actually the mutual repulsion going on in electromagnetic and nuclear energies at subatomic levels. There is no hardness, it is a subjective readout our brains feed to our consciousness. We are trapped in Plato’s cave, making up possible stories about what is really out there. But what is in here?

The Theory of the Conscious Universe* postulates that everything in the universe reduces to neither matter nor energy, but to INFORMATION. But then what is information?

The clue comes from deconstructing the word into its parts: IN…FORMATION — information is a pattern — a formation. Any pattern is information — even randomness. Since information exists in the form rather than requiring a substance — form and substance being an ancient division of aspects of things going back at least as far as the Vedas — information can exist even in something that is substance-less.

In fact we see this every day in our computers — which contain and send and receive and process information — but that information does not have a concrete substance — it exists when stored as energy/nothingness, as both charge and non-charge, representing zeroes and ones. The nothingness (the zeroes) are as much information as the 1’s (electric charges).

What then is consciousness? It is the Self — the capacity to experience — that which experiences — and the experiences are information received by the consciousness or Self. The information appears to us to be coming from something that has independent existence outside the Self. It appears that hard and/or wet and/or gaseous objects out there are encoded as electromagnetic signals that strike our visual sense organs which then encode them as electrical pulses in our brain — or that strike our apparent body where they are converted to electrical pulses we call touch — or as compactions and expansions of air that cause pressure against our auditory sense organs where again they are converted to electrical pulses in our brain — or as interactions with our taste and smell organs, also winding up as electrical pulses in our brain.

But all of this could actually be taking place in our Self. There might be nothing out there because there might not be an “out there”. Our experience would be the same.

One way or the other, we can definitively state now two things: the Self exists — the Experiencer — and information exists, for this is what gives variation to what we experience. Both the Self and information exist in consciousness — this much can be stated as fact. The rest is supposition.

But why am I capitalizing Self? The answer in our next posting — our response to the question, “What is the meaning of life?”

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

All the best,

Bill

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Maximizing the Emotional Fullness of Life

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Originally posted July 28, 2011

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

Why I am writing about this subject — The Theory of The Conscious Universe?

To explain let me go back a few thousand years to the earliest philosophers — folks like Thales and Epictetus, Socrates and the many other earliest thinkers at the dawn of written language.

Philosophy itself means the love of knowing. “Knowing” itself was one of the first subjects of philosophy — philosophers asked “what is knowing?” and “how is it possible that knowing can exist?” This sub-field of philosophy is called epistemology, as you may know.

Significantly, the root of the word “knowing” is “to see” — you may recall that in an earlier post I pointed out that being primates whose dominant sense is sight, we humans put seeing on a higher pedestal than our other four physical senses.

To me the two most important words that explain why philosophy exists are “wonder” and “awe”. These primal feelings/intuitions are the driver of philosophy, and it was philosophy that gave rise to art and culture, science and technology, morality and religion. First we had those feelings, then intuitions arose to guide us in the right direction to realize unspoken questions and to figure out the best ways of trying to seek answers. Without those feelings where would we be today? Perhaps still in trees.

Growing up I was unwittingly recapitulating the race’s ontogeny — feeling those feelings and being led through the same kinds of intuitions the early philosophers had, even before I could read such works and discover that others had been there long before me.

Freud called these feelings “the oceanic experience” (highly recommended reading: Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents). He postulated that religion came from this sense of something larger than ourselves. Remarkably, there may be nothing larger than our Self, if The Theory of The Conscious Universe is the right explanation of the meaning of life. Our Self may be the only thing that actually exists, and the cause of everything that we experience. In fact this idea is the core of The Theory of The Conscious Universe: all that exists is a single Consciousness, capable of “entertaining” Itself by making virtual copies of Itself, each of which shares the experience of being a self, and may be denied full or partial memory of who it really is. The Original Observer sees through the eyes (or other sensory equipment) of the virtual copies and the copies may or may not be(come) aware of the looker above who is also seeing out their eyes.

So back to my reason for these writings, despite the fact that the daily interests of my dear readers may be focused totally elsewhere. The reason is this: The Theory of The Conscious Universe bears the promise of an ability to restore the magic of life, without the need to take things on faith, engage in superstition, or follow rituals which to some may not feel natural. If it is true that Consciousness is the supreme nature of the Universe, and that each of us is a reflection and a particularization of the Absolute Consciousness in a sacred game making each of us a unique and important experiment in a celestial and divine process, and that this in no way steps away from the scientific method and the disciplines of scientific thinking — then how much emotional fullness might be restored into everyone’s daily lives by recognizing this heritage?

Who among us has not had the experience of lying on your back in the grass looking up at the stars and suddenly feeling elevated, understanding deep down the importance and the excitement of the journey we are all on, and the hugeness of it all and our inextricable connection to it all? But after childhood, how much of this living large feeling makes it into our daily lives? Are we not ground down into pettiness? Do we not still yearn to feel the greatness of our existence each second of every day?

Even before proving that The Theory of The Conscious Universe is true, simply the fact that it could be true is enough to place all religion into a new light, as scientific possibility. In fact it would be unscientific to rule out the core truth of all religion, without having disproven it.

The unity and integrity of having all things inside oneself integrated into a wholeness of purpose, a meaningfulness, makes life emotionally full. In a highly rational culture such as ours has been since the Golden Age of Greece, we subconsciously are unable to get in touch with the greatest feelings we can have, unless we can square those feelings with the rational strictures in our minds. The Theory of The Conscious Universe can do that, without appeal to faith, because it is a scientific explanation for “what is”, which lines up with what we know from Quantum Mechanics (QM) and Relativity, and can explain why it is that time and space exist in our subjective experience and yet are not really there according to these cutting edge sciences.

That’s why I share The Theory of The Conscious Universe. It has restored the magic of life to me, and I wish to share that magical feeling with as many people as possible. Especially you people who have touched my life and to whom I am grateful for what you have taught and given me.

All the best,

Bill

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Consciousness Has Been the Black Hole of Physics

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Originally posted July 21, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions we will tackle in upcoming postings:

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

And many more.

Best to all,

Bill

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

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Old Wounds Can Eventually Heal

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Volume 4, Issue 25. Originally published September 4, 2014

Young Bill on stage with his dad Ned and mom Sandy in wingsThe year was 1954. My parents, whom I called Pop and Sandy at that time (later Ned was renamed “The Chief” by a Native American horn player in his band and I then switched from Pop), took me out to dinner in Manhattan, which I loved. (We lived in Brooklyn.) Gallaghe’s Steakhouse or perhaps it was Joe Marsh’s Candlelight Clurb, which isn’t there anymore. I had a steak. We had a terrific time. I was in a warm glow by the end of dinner when they revealed to me their secret purpose for me that night.

Joel Grey’s “Star Time Kids” was shot at the CBS studio around the corner and I was to be on live TV that night, in fact, right after dinner.

I went from cloud 9 to hell in one second flat. I couldn’t explain why the idea was out of the question, I was too upset to think clearly.

They had always gotten what they wanted out of me in terms of onstage performances. They inculcated in me from my earliest memories that I had been born in a trunk and there was no question of me not getting up there and doing whatever the act was at the time. I don’t remember ever putting up any resistance to it until the night in question, since resistance was futile. Nevertheless, suddenly I was in a situation where for reasons I could not even articulate to myself, this trouper was going to let the public down. “The show must go on” (years later my father said this with a choke in his voice, the night he went to the club the day Sandy died) but in my case the show would not go on.

They tried to compromise with me, first saying, “Okay, just sit in the peanut gallery and you won’t even have to say anything,” but I would not hear of it. The best they could do was to get me to peek in at the studio, hoping that I would relent at the last minute and show what a trouper I really was. But one look at the blinding battery of klieg lights was it. I had my fill, and we went home in a sad cloud.

Sandy tried to make us all feel better. She explained what had happened, saying, “Billy is a trouper. But he is a perfectionist and wants to prepare fully to give his best performance every time. This time we forgot that and thought it would be easier on him to not have him know about it until the last minute. It was our fault.”

Ned agreed she was right but it never made me feel any better. All my life, whenever I was having a bad moment for any reason, this was one of the regretful memories that I would beat myself up with once again.

Separately I wondered from time to time how my life might have been totally different if I had gone the other way that night.

***

One night I was dreaming that Lalita and I were at an advertising/media industry conference somewhere, not in NY. I would be speaking that night. We were meeting people before the conference. Yana, my editor (who puts in all these commas), would be joining us but was late as the conference was about to begin. At the last second she came running faster than I have ever seen her move, down the long empty corridor with a red face and a big smile.

The conference started and a gent got up and gave a tepid 5-minute opening remark. Then the MC — of all people, the late Ben Wallach, who had been the Athletic/Social Activities Director at the Hotel Brickman — called me to go on next.

In the dream I suddenly realized we had forgotten to bring the slides. I didn’t even know what the conference was about.

In previous dreams of this kind there was a hideous moment and then I would wake up.

This time was different. I realized I had no idea what I would say, but something in me felt perfectly willing to go up there and see what would come out of me. I started for the stage.

And then I woke up.

When I told the story to Lalita she said, “You woke yourself just in time to not have to experience making a fool of yourself.”

But it wasn’t like that at all. I woke up feeling exhilarated. I didn’t know exactly why at first. I knew I was pleased with myself for the total acceptance of the challenge that traditionally had been my Waterloo: being unprepared for public performance. I knew that the way I react in dreams is exactly what I would do in the future. I felt liberated, released.

Then it hit me: this was the erasure of the Star Time experience. Closure of that karma. Full circle. After a lifetime of disappointment in myself for how I’d handled that moment, I had redeemed myself. I am a trouper.

So what’s the point of my sharing this story? What do you, the reader, get out of it?

We all have deep wounds. Some are papered over by repression and some may be with us all the time. Whatever they are, if we take them out and look at them from time to time, and make it an active intention all our lives to become that which we hold as our own ideal self in real everyday life, inevitably in time — sometimes decades as in this case — we get there.

Best to all,

Bill

Follow my regular media blog contribution, “In Terms of ROI“ at MediaVillage.com under MediaBizBloggers.