Category Archives: Consciousness

Why Should We Be Good?

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Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog
Created March 27, 2026

For thousands of years, great spiritual leaders and philosophers have given us all kinds of different answers to this question. And yet, from the beginning of recorded history right up to the present, it is mostly a record of bad behavior.

Why can’t we be good?

Is it because none of these answers is persuasive enough for the average person?

Ancient Eastern Philosophy

  • Lao Tzu (Taoism): To align with the Tao (the natural way of the universe). Acting with virtue isn’t about following rules, but about returning to a state of natural balance and simplicity.
  • Confucius: To maintain Social Harmony. Being “good” (Ren) fulfills our roles within the family and state, ensuring a stable, functional society through ritual and respect.
  • The Buddha: To end Suffering (Dukkha). Ethical conduct (Sila) is a prerequisite for mental clarity; by avoiding harm, we untangle the karmic knots that keep us bound to cycles of pain.

Classical Western Philosophy

  • Socrates & Plato: For the Health of the Soul. Just as a diseased body cannot function, an unjust soul is chaotic and miserable. Virtue is the “order” of the soul.
  • Aristotle: To achieve Eudaimonia (Flourishing). He argued that being virtuous is the unique “function” of a human; we are only truly happy when we are excellent at being human.
  • The Stoics (Marcus Aurelius/Epictetus): Because Virtue is the Only Good. External things (wealth, health) are indifferent; acting with reason and integrity is the only thing truly within our control.

Religious Traditions

  • Moses/Jesus/Muhammad (Abrahamic): To Obey and Imitate the Divine. The reasoning is rooted in a covenant: being good is an act of love, justice, and obedience toward a Creator who embodies these traits.
  • Krishna (Bhagavad Gita): As Selfless Duty (Dharma). We act righteously not for the “fruits” (rewards) of the action, but because it is our divine duty to maintain the cosmic order.

Enlightenment & Modern Philosophy

  • Immanuel Kant: Out of Rational Duty. He proposed the Categorical Imperative: you should act only according to rules that you would want to become universal laws for everyone.
  • John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism): To Minimize Pain and Maximize Pleasure. The reason to be good is simple math: our actions should aim for the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche: To Create Meaning. While he critiqued “slave morality,” he believed the “Overman” must create their own virtues to overcome nihilism and say “yes” to life.

Admittedly, all of these notions are obviously “hifalutin” as perceived by the average person. The average person is all wrapped up in having been hypnotized by over-acculturation and is in a state of Emergency Oversimplification Procedure (EOP), especially in our Age of Acceleritis in which information overload has clogged our neurons to the breaking point. Driven like a robot by conditioned reactions, subconscious drivers, and emotional mood swings make the average person go.

All of these ethical ideas are beyond the scope of available cognitive focus. So we would as likely be bad as good in any given moment, were it not for the maturation process that teaches us to try to get along because otherwise life is even more painful.

The rational mind itself cannot cause the individual to choose to be ethical and to then be able to carry that out. Too much of behavior is caused by the subconscious. Years or decades may be spent getting the subconscious to follow the intentions of the rational mind, and most people do not even try.

Why has the world taken a dark turn recently? Why do we now seem to expect and allow and even put on a pedestal, bad behavior?

In my view, it’s the combination of not knowing how to steer the mind and feelings, and the recent contraction of spirituality as a way of life. Even when I was growing up, the adherence to religious codes was very strong compared to the nihilism of the 21st Century.

The greatest times in terms of good behavior were back when spirituality went deep and was felt as being as real as the material world. Now, the people who believe themselves to be the most moral and ethical people cannot see their own bad behavior.

There is no sense of Meaning. Life is perceived to be Meaningless, so naturally, we can do whatever we want.

The virtues which led us for thousands of years have now slipped away into a relativistic grey area, giving us a sense of greater freedom, license to be bad, and there are no hard and fast guardrails. So naturally, those among us who lacked love in their youth would take bad behavior to extremes.

Right around the next corner, quantum physics is going to solve the hard problem of consciousness, and accept what the inventors of quantum physics already knew: the universe IS a Single Consciousness of which each of us is an avatar.

This does not negate biblical history; it explains how all of it can be true.

When this becomes widely known, it will gradually reinstate the perennial ideas about the need to be kind to one another – because we ARE one another.

And because the world has Meaning. One Consciousness is at play, that is the meaning of the universe. We are here to enjoy it and to learn from it. To play nice with each other. All of the reasons given by spiritual leaders and philosophers are right.

My reason to be good is that it makes everything better for me and everyone else.

Being bad is, underneath it all, a way of striking back at a universe that one feels has mistreated you. Actually, you did it to yourself, but most of us do not want to take responsibility for the consequences of our actions; it is part of EOP, and the way you see everyone else acting.

Of all of the spiritual leaders and philosophers discussed above, it is Nietzsche who comes closest to rationalizing the current mode of thinking: we each make up our own Meaning, we each decide what is real Virtue. It has created an era which really fits what Hobbes thought of the human race.

Hobbes argued that without a central authority or moral rules, humans live in a “State of Nature.” In this state, everyone has a right to everything, leading to a “war of all against all.” He famously described life here as:

“…solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” He felt that a strong leader would be the solution, forcing people to follow the rules or else. History has proven him wrong about this last bit. The Leviathan leaders have made things more like what Hobbes saw as the state of nature. Lao Tzu was closer to the mark on seeing the state of nature as idyllic.

To answer the question posed at the beginning of this article, we benefit by following the good path, and we benefit others by it.

By living a virtuous life of kindness to others, we tap into the love that is all around us and add to it, a truly spiritual feeling, and one that has meaning for everyone.

Love to all,
Bill

 

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My new book POWERFUL MIND has some great reviews

An innovative too for self-discovery

“A compelling, optimistic, and original approach to mental focus, Powerful Mind is an innovative tool for self-discovery and creative liberation. Succinctly outlined and intuitively structured, this book is replete with rational advice, using a radical but commonsense approach. It takes a rare and adroit thinker to incorporate myriad worldviews and welcome diverse readers, regardless of ideological allegiance, but Harvey shows himself to be precisely that. The book is a masterfully structured, intellectually affirming, and potentially paradigm-shifting read.”
~ Self-Publishing Review, ★★★★

Which Level of Consciousness Do You Want To Be In?

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Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog
Created February 20, 2026

Flow state, the Zone, where everything does itself perfectly, you exceed your expectations of performance limits.

You have undoubtedly noticed that you are not always at your best. Almost nobody is. Sometimes we have very smart ideas, at other times our minds are dull, and at other times we think we are thinking very intelligently, only to discover that we were way off and should have known better from various earlier experiences and supposed learnings.

We generally assume that this is the way things are and that there is no way to improve our own mental/emotional performance, with some exceptions. We might read a self-betterment book or article once in a while. We might take a supplement that is for making our memory and other faculties work better. If someone we trust gives us earnest advice, we might listen with an open mind, and take it to heart, try to be better in the way suggested. We might even meditate or do yoga.

All of this is admirable. But is it enough? Have we pulled out all the stops to maximize our own performance at the game of life? Should we? Is it worth it? If it were so important, wouldn’t everybody be doing it?

The game isn’t set up that way. Particularly today, when so many people have more than one job in order to make ends meet and maintain the all-important lifestyle, who’s got the time for the luxury of being a perfectionist in any area of life? With two media bombarding you during most waking moments (sometimes only one), who can focus on anything anyway? And if you had a moment to spare, would you want to fill it with something that seems very hard and complicated?

Of course not. Nor should you. Fortunately, upping your consciousness does not have to be hard, nor complicated. And it can make you feel better fast and all the time. This post is all about the lazy person’s way of hacking consciousness. Winning with minimum effort. What a relief!

First, a quick, simplified map of the three levels of consciousness you can be in:

  1. Flow state, the Zone, where everything does itself perfectly, you exceed your own expectations of performance limits, and are as happy as a child at play at their favorite game. This is where you want to be as much as possible. Peak experience as Maslow called it.
  2. Observer state. Here you have no external dependencies – whatever happens, you remain impassive. You have no internal dependencies – you are able to also remain unmoved by emotional alarms going off inside of you. All by force of will, courage, determination, and sheer grit. That’s all you need to ACCEPT WHAT IS. Also known as Stoicism. You take the blows, self-inflicted or otherwise, and do not cave in. As if you didn’t care at all about anything. The way heroes are characteristically depicted in all stories since stories began. You also keep an eye on things inside and out and carefully discriminate courses of action, waiting as long as practical before making each decision, like George Washington and Davy Crockett. Including decisions about what and who to believe. All the old locked-down decisions are unlocked again in Observer state. You coolly observe in detail everything all over again with a completely open mind and no biases from all previous experiences.
  3. EOP – Emergency Operating Procedure – you keep up by moving as fast as you can to get all the things done that have been heaped upon you by yourself and others, get them all over with, and you defer enjoyment until after the list has been mostly ticked off when you can indulge in effortless escapism without having to think about your life or about anything serious. During this time, you experience endless moments of irritation about one little thing or another. You may or may not realize that it is your ego that is causing the irritation, and that you are dependent on others to keep you in a good mood, at which they usually fail.

Those are the three choices, in the briefest summary. The wisest choice among these is to spend as little time as possible in the lowest state. It is achievable by establishing the Stoic mindset as your main point of view. You don’t want to be cast around by outside forces; you want to be your own person, able to stand alone when necessary. You don’t want dependencies, you don’t even want to be dependent on your own internal clamor of bad feelings and babbling voices.

You want to identify with the SELF that is your inner essence, the pure EXPERIENCER, and take everything else with a grain of salt.

Is that all there is to it? Just that one principle will keep you in the two upper states of consciousness?

Not quite.

There is one other basic rule. Do not add any negativity to whatever negativity has gone before.

Stop your negative facial expressions and body language, and internal wallowings, and above all, any hurtful statements. Don’t add any negativity to the sauce of life; there’s plenty already. It will bring you and everyone else down, except for the Stoics in the crowd.

Love to all,
Bill

 

 

All The World’s a Classroom

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Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog, January 10, 2025
Created February 2, 2024

Not to contradict the Bard’s “All the World’s a Stage” – both lenses make sense. The value of using lenses experimentally is that you see things in new ways. This both stretches and searches your imagination.

Einstein said that imagination was even more important to him than intellect, and he demonstrated the power of imagination in his thought experiments methodology, without which we might to this day not know about relativity.

Hopefully, you have in my earlier writings picked up my notion that there is probably a scientific explanation for the actual existence of God. My own lens (which I now have come to strongly suspect is the truth) is that all that exists is a single consciousness of which we are individualized manifestations.

In A Theory of Everything Including Consciousness and God, I support this hypothesis within the current physics standard model, positing that John Wheeler’s quantum foam might be identical with consciousness.

If the truth is anywhere in that neighborhood, what is consciousness doing here on Earth, why is our history the way it is, why are we facing the perils we today are facing?

If one looks for the Good, and asks how can the turmoil and terror we are now undergoing be a good thing, the answer is that it might be the only way for us to learn lessons we desperately need to learn.

It is common to observe that a person who is spiraling downward often cannot reverse course until he or she hits bottom. This has oft been observed for example in the case of alcoholics.

Perhaps we have become so addicted culturally to ego and its demands that the only cure is to let it take its painful course. Money and power have over the millennia been concentrated in a small fraction of us. Today, some of those people have decided to use their money and power for Good, while the vast majority still are hypnotized by greed and narcissism.

The vast majority worry about the future and have become cynical. Merriam-Webster defines “cynicism” as “the sneering disbelief in sincerity or integrity”. This means literally that the average person believes that no one has sincerity or integrity and if they do, they’re a fool.

What if the meaning and purpose of life on Earth is that we are here to learn about life, about reality, our place in it, and what to do about it, how to fit in cosmically, and perhaps how to be trustworthy enough to be reborn in an even more powerful body and mind, possibly at a higher level of evolution?

This cannot be tossed aside as a ridiculous idea. It could be what is actually going on.

What can we do more of than anything else? Learn, perhaps? Each day, each second, there is something to learn from the situation we are in. Possibly a lens might tend to be more useful the more that lens can help us notice learning opportunities and think deeply, and feel deeply around inside, about these learning opportunities.

All of the turbulence in our minds is in its own buckshot way a groping, distracted, grasping at straws attempt to figure out stuff. How do we apologize, how do we keep this job, how do we cure this ill, how do we repair this damage, what should we do first. We may not be successful at it, but it does appear to be some sort of effort to learn something.

All species appear to share curiosity and play, both of which are key parts of a learning process.

Where we went wrong as a race is we learned how to take more than our share and then unintentionally idealized that as the summum bonum. The highest good.

Hence a world fixated on competition rather than cooperation. A world that increasingly disbelieves in the Good.

Is Earth where souls from everywhere who got left back got sent for remedial education?

Or does it just seem that way from the news and social media babble?

As we navigate amongst each other each day we encounter friendly folks making jokes and standing up to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. 99% of what we experience in an average day is Good. Unless we are spending too much time imbibing doom and gloom from pitiless media choices.

A lens of seeing the Good, looking for it whenever it seems to be absent, asking what could a possible single consciousness be doing here for us to doubt the justification for suffering in today’s world, such a lens enables us to divine what the Divine might be thinking.

We ourselves have conscious choices to make as to what learning we welcome the most, what lessons we wish to draw upon ourselves. We can choose not to suffer. It actually works when one uses the powers of concentration which lie perhaps dormant from long disuse within us. We can choose to release the tensions in our bodies, to see and feel the Good in our lives in the present moment, to take in and savor the beauty around us, to focus on taking the Good to others, sharing Good as widely as possible, learning step by patient step how to become better at it.

We need to learn that negativity cannot serve the Good.

Love to all,
Bill

Leading Neuroscientist Confirms Theory of Bio-AI

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Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog:  July 19, 2024

As I was growing up, I was constantly studying my own mind. This was natural to me and then it was accelerated by my experiencing Flow state, mostly during some stage performances starting at age four.

I didn’t have a name for it other than describing it as “perfect performance as if doing itself.” There were other attributes I didn’t talk about because I knew they were taboo, such as the feeling that these experiences were otherworldly and suggested “magic” or the “supernatural”, which I repressed as I had decided that science was everything and that religion was merely superstition. I eventually revised the latter decision based on experiencing the spiritual level of Flow state.

I wanted to regain the “perfect performance” state and maintain it all the time. This motivated me to pay even more attention to what was going on in my mind at all times, and to relate that activity to the external world experiences I was having at the same time. I sought to relate states of my mind to the positive or negative feedback I was getting from other people and things.

The first “validation” that this strange “perfect” state existed came when I confessed my experiences to my favorite comedian of the era, Jack Carter. He said, “Oh sure, Billy, everyone in show business has that sometimes, it’s called ‘being on’.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term “Flow state” when he studied the phenomenon as head of the psychology department at the University of Chicago. His first published work on the subject came out in 1975.

My first published work was written in 1972 and its subject matter was what I had learned about the states of my mind. It came out as the book Mind Magic in 1976. Throughout the book I referred to a part of the mind as “the robot”. This was the part of the mind that generated some of my actions that yielded the most negative results in the external world. The robot I had deduced was keeping me out of the “perfect” state (Flow state).

I knew that this automatic part of myself was making predictions. The following passage appears on pages 48-49 of Mind Magic:

MIND MAGIC by Bill Harvey“When you are about to see something, your mind automatically searches your memory for a comparable object (note the distinction between you seeing something and your mind having already seen it). If your mind finds something similar enough, it projects the stored image onto the new object so that you do not ever see the new object, but are merely dimly aware that there is a familiar type of object there… As a result of this, you mostly do not perceive your environment, instead perceiving mostly what you expect to perceive, i.e. you usually see your mind’s prediction.”

The term “artificial intelligence” and its abbreviation as “AI” appeared in 1955 in a project proposal by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon. I became aware of the term as an avid sci-fi reader and began using it in my own sci-fi writing in the late 70s. In 1979 I formed one of the first neuroscience companies in the marketing field (Psychophysiological Research Management, PRM), partnering with Dr. Richy Davidson and Dr. Dan Goleman. Sometime thereafter, I began to use the term “bio-AI” as synonymous with “the robot”.

In 2002, Dr. Karl Friston published his first work on “active inference” in which he proved the existence of the prediction engine in the brain which I had introspected in myself a half-century before it became scientifically recognized. Friston’s work with many other scientists has identified the prefrontal cortex as being involved in the automated calculations often occurring below the level of consciousness. That suggests we have only had the bio-AI for about 200,000 years, for that is when the prefrontal cortex appeared.

After William James, psychology had become disenchanted with the use of introspective evidence, because of the tendency to bias and inaccuracy. However, the fact that in modern times an individual was able to predict science decades in advance by the careful use of introspection, strongly suggests that introspective evidence be reconsidered as a tool of psychology.

A few pages later in Mind Magic on page 53 it says:

“…society communicates expectations to you which you then see in place of seeing the realities themselves.”

This theme recurs throughout the book, emphasizing that cultural biases are conditioned into the bio-AI. This explains why brainwashing by social media, media “news”, parents and peer pressure is so powerful: it slips into the bio-AI inference engine below the level of consciousness.

We as a species are at a crossroads. The pro-survival bio-AI which enabled us to evade superior predators 200,000 years ago today often functions as contra-survival, as I discovered as a child by allowing my automated reactions to play out in the real world, which often resulted in negative results. The chaos into which the entire world has fallen today, to me, points to the urgent need for rapid widespread education of a new kind, teaching people how to bring decision making into the sphere of the conscious mind, what I call metacognition (term coined by John H. Flavell) and my partner Dr. Gerald Zaltman calls open-mindedness.

My interests in introspection and in neuroscience are connected to one another. My life’s work is to make the connections between the discoveries of neuroscience and the subjective inner life of the individual that will enable science and education to work together to cause most human beings to be able to spend most of their time in states of metacognition/open-mindedness and Flow. If we as a species can accelerate this process of what I call “psychotechnology” or “microcosmology” we can deter the drift back into the self-administered Feudal slavery of inviting “strong men” to take over our governance and protection. It’s never too late.

We all know how difficult it is to control the mind, to master oneself. Socrates said, “Know Thyself,” and Plato said, “I still do not know myself, so why would I spend time studying anything else?” (Phaedra) The only control panel or dashboard life gives us for achieving this task is the user interface (UI) we call the mind. The conscious mind experiences “qualia”, subjective experiences within consciousness, including words, images, snatches of memories, and especially feelings. We have control over certain things through this UI. We can choose to slow down our breathing, engage in positive imagination, question our attachment to certain outcomes, use reasoning and evidence, and these and many other tactics are within the sphere of our control. In this introspective world, we have the only chance we will ever get to solve our problems or to see that they are opportunities. Therefore, we cannot Behavioristically study only structure and function of the brain, we need to relate events at the physical level to the qualia at the mind level, or else we lose the value of having that control panel inside.

My best to all,
Bill

 

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