Tag Archives: Theory of the Conscious Universe

Speak to the Other’s Saliency

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Powerful Mind Part 32

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog, December 20, 2024.
Created October 13, 2023

Read Powerful Mind 31

Every conversation is a potential spike in learning, typically even richer  than most
other times, though “alone times” can reap the most surprising revelations.

The amount of learning available in each instant of life mostly goes untapped. Looking at life through a variety of observation lenses helps capture more of that nascent learning.

One way of looking at life is that it’s all a big reconnaissance. Looking at it that way defers the feeling of urgency to achieve closure on some solid pro or con position on every little thing.

Every conversation is a potential spike in learning, typically even richer than most other times, though “alone times” can reap the most surprising revelations.

Many of us live lives focused around day jobs in some sort of business or another, sometimes in the public or nonprofit sector or academia or science, but it is still “taking care of business” on a day-to-day basis. This affords us many conversations, sometimes specifically goal-directed, and sometimes off-duty.

In our interactions, while taking care of business or at other times, often each person brings some hoped-for outcome. Say for example you attend a small group meeting or a one-on-one. The other person probably has one or more things they are trying to achieve and wants your help. You may be in the same position. It may not be obvious from the outset what the other person wants. You may not always be aware of your own expectations or desires, they may be hidden from you, and you may not have done your homework.

The networks in the brain we have discussed before include the salience network, which is responsible for prioritizing what to do next, what is most important in the present moment, and which has the key role of switching from the default network to the executive control network, which is an overarching theme of our body of work within what I call psychotechnology, the pragmatic optimization of mental/affective functions.

Saliency as a concept refers to that which stands out in the foreground against the background of everything else.

When you are with someone it is polite and considerate to try to discern what the other person’s saliency network is prioritizing at the moment. For example, let’s say it is in a business environment. You may be there for a very special reason of your own of which you are well aware.

The normative way of proceeding in today’s world culture – at least in the West – is to go for the jugular. Take the initiative to make your pitch.

However, you will learn much more and increase your chances of success if you start by helping the other person further the implicit goals of whatever is currently the focal point of their salience network. It’s also kinder, nicer, and – if my theory of the conscious universe is correct – the “force will be with you” if you do it this way.

In order to do this you need to listen and observe carefully, without presuppositions.

You also need to avoid pigeonholing based on your first impressions. “Aha, they want X!” might occur to you but keep an open mind.

Within the conventional bounds of whatever context you are in, of course, you are allowed to ask direct questions to find out what the other person is most concerned about.

This next thought is very much about the present-day reality and may not be so important in other eras. Prepare to be shocked because nowadays it’s not uncommon to hear a person say something that is strongly emotionally charged and deeply wedded to some political or anti-group position. If you don’t already know this about the person it could flip a switch inside you that has the effect of feeling that this is not your sort of person. You may start to think about how to depart. Observe those reactions in yourself without ratifying them and let them drift into the past. Continue to be open-minded and compassionate.

Once it becomes more clear what the other person wants, work on that first, and hold back what you are there to accomplish.

If it’s a group meeting, before putting forth your own agenda, observe carefully to see if you can make out what is salient to each person in the room or Zoom.

Work creatively to help others accomplish their aims. Doing this before putting forth your own needs is a better pragmatic approach in terms of actual achievement of your aims.

Of course, if there is a natural linkage by which your desired ends can serve theirs, without contortions or fakery, then it’s a win/win.

Here are some helpful observational lenses lifted from my book Mind Magic which may facilitate learning during the reconnaissance.

    • If I look at this situation as a child might, what do I see?
    • Be aware of the emotions radiated by each entity including yourself.
    • How might I turn this to everyone’s advantage?
    • Unstitch yourself from the moment by looking down at the whole scene from the ceiling.
    • Question your own possible biases which may affect what you see.
    • Strip away your own interpretations to get back to the things themselves.
    • “Just the facts, Ma’am.” (Dragnet’s Joe Friday)
    • Remember that words have a physical impact on you, so that you must guard against being influenced by them.
    • Toy with alternate explanations for events. Allow your imagination free reign to propose the most unbelievable such explanations.
    • Look at everything as if seeing it for the first time.
    • Why did I notice that?
    • Why did that happen? What is it trying to tell me?

Love to all,
Bill

 

happy holidays!

 

Shift in Perspective

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Powerful Mind Part 24

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog, September 13, 2024
Created August 18, 2023
Read Powerful Mind 23

Possibly the most pervasive hidden assumption we all make without thinking twice is that we are each a separate entity.

Science has neither proven nor disproven that we are each a separate being. Science has perhaps not given much attention to this at all. The numerous scientists I have met besides myself appear to have this hidden assumption too.

If, however, my Theory of the Conscious Universe happens to be right, this hidden assumption is wrong. My theory likens consciousness to a self-aware (sentient) computer made out of energy. A type of energy that science has not yet accounted for, which I call psionic energy, presuming a quantum of that energy called a psion. I speculate that psions are a species of tachyons, i.e. they move at faster than light speed.

Robert Anton Heinlein wrote a novel Time for the Stars in which telepathy between identical twins is used for instantaneous communication between Earth and its starships ranging out to other stars and even to other galaxies, where light and radio waves take years and even millennia to travel back to Earth. A neuroscientist friend of mine is doing basic work in this area right now, seeking to determine first if there really is telepathy.

Both consciousness and computers process information. John Archibald Wheeler, who trained many of today’s top physicists, in his “Bits Before Its” theory, postulated that information is the substrate of the universe.

This aligns with my Theory of the Conscious Universe, which came to me before I read Wheeler’s work, and coincides with Wheeler’s theories in all particulars except one: Wheeler has quantum foam, probability waves, and virtual particles pre-existing consciousness which freezes the probabilities into certainties called matter and energy existing within a field of spacetime.

Where I differ with Wheeler is that I postulate that his quantum foam, probability waves, and virtual particles are the information processing of the universe’s consciousness. The foam, probabilities and virtual particles are the thoughts, feelings, images and other qualia arising within the Master Mindfield. I have used initial caps to signify my respect for the Universal Mind.

If we are avatars in a “videogame” the One Self is playing, then our real identity is that of the whole universe. We are a phenomenon representing the universe itself, as each of our cells is a part of us.

This relationship of sameness and “partness” with the parent universe has a pragmatically beneficial implication: the universe has every reason in the world to be benevolent toward us, as we are part of it. If my theory is correct, death is not the end, and the direction of the play we are acting in is toward a happier future, as the universe itself is invested in our success.

Then how bizarre we must seem in our hisandherstory to observers out in space who know the truth. The One Self understands us from the inside and outside and so the explanation is there to eliminate the sense of the bizarre, yet even from the point of view of the universe we probably seem like deviate savages.

We can imagine Earth in another timeline where the human inhabitants could tell right away that they were all part of The One Consciousness. They would not have invented war and weapons, nor even business competition, they would have been very cooperative with one another, and kinder to animals and plants and even to minerals and bodies of water.

Perhaps The One Self considers that timeline somewhat boring compared to ours whose nastiness might be considered an acceptable cost for the greater sense of adventure we bring. More likely, the universe is helping us to learn to evolve out of our present state, where we have turned a heavenly planet into a somewhat hellish one at the moment.

As I have sought to logically prove here before, science has not yet verified (or even figured out how to verify) my theory. Nor has science proven Materialistic Accidentalism. Therefore if each of us is to behave so as to make our own actions appropriate, whether the universe is a free-for-all of separate beings or all one being, we need to make a shift in our perspective every moment of our lives from now on.

The pragmatic benefits of this open-mindedness include the reduction in causing unpleasant things to happen to us because we expected them and unconsciously brought them upon ourselves. Instead, we shall leave open the possibility that Wheeler and I are both right in saying that our minds affect reality, and so we shall use our minds to focus on what we want to have happen, and not to dwell obsessively on what we fear will happen.

How might we attain this shift in perspective, down at the operational level?

 Identifying With All You Perceive

Kabbalah, Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, and Kashmir Shaivism are among the many philosophies which predate, predict, and align with my Theory of the Conscious Universe. A practitioner who totally gets these philosophies no longer looks out his/her eyes identifying with their own body/mind as themselves, they look out and identify with everything they experience, inside and outside. “I Am That” is a sacred/holy trigger phrase that crops up in almost every such tradition. It is a reminder to not identify with the illusional separate self, but with everything in the experience bubble moment to moment.

Nobility

A noble person is one who is unselfish, fair-minded, unbiased, and morally good. These traits emerge as organically natural to one who identifies with all he or she experiences, rather than identifying with only the one body seemingly being occupied by the individual consciousness. That body is just the self-propelled tripod (actually bipod) for the current camera one is inhabiting at the moment in the play.

In ancient times there were occasional good and noble kings and queens who identified with the people whom they served, protected, and took care of. The noble kings and queens had typically been trained in spiritual philosophies.

In present times, in movies and television/streaming series, and occasionally in real life even today, we call such people “heroes” and “heroines.” Their every action proves convincingly that they care about others. Unfortunately, there is not enough of this going on. You can make a difference there.

In your experience bubble with other people, strive for all to win, not just your own bipod to win.

Positive and Negative Feedback Loops

“If your motives are truly for ‘the good of all,’
this will be sensed by others
and they will cooperate with you,
lending their energies to your actions.
If your motives are to simulate selflessness
in order to gain power for your self,
this will be sensed by others
and they will tend to not cooperate with you,
lending their energies to the muffling of your actions.”
— Mind Magic, Page 222

 Accept What Is


View time: 37 seconds

Becoming upset is railing against the universe – one’s larger Self. If something is happening or has happened that means the universe let it happen. Your taking umbrage at such happenings is fighting city hall in the largest possible sense – making no sense at all.

A superior response is to accept what is and work on figuring out what to do about it that will bring the most happiness to the most people as soon as possible. Armed with a smile your plans will stand a much better chance of sooner success. Even if your plan will probably not see fast results there is still no better course of action for you to take until you think of a new plan that could see faster positive results.

You may be in a hellish situation but if you accept it is what it is with a smile and take it as a creative challenge, you will do yourself and everyone else more good, than by taking any other strategic course of action.

Love,
Bill

 

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If the Universe Is One Consciousness, the Creator Is You

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Created April 19, 2024
Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.

The world’s most acclaimed quantum mechanics and relativity physicists including Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, John Wheeler, and Stephen Hawking dealt with consciousness in ways that have not, to my knowledge, been looked at by philosophers for their possible implications.

Physicists are a very useful subset of philosophers—especially when physicists deal with things beyond the physical.

Originally, physicists were not willing to deal with the non-physical; they left that to the metaphysicists and metaphysicians. Over time, two things changed:

    1. Energy, which, being invisible, was not considered physical, was reassigned to be covered by physicists.
    2. Metaphysics became lumped with superstition and religion as being outside the field of science.

Then, Einstein came along and included the observer in his thought experiments, allowing consciousness to be included in the mathematics of relativity. Heisenberg showed that the observer influenced the outcome of the experiment.

Einstein was convinced that quantum mechanics was not a complete description of reality, and he attempted to prove it by means of the EPR Paradox, which continues to be debated with a lot of difficult math by many brilliant scientists, without any final resolution. The closest thing to a resolution might be the little-known analysis by Belgian physicist Diederik Aerts which showed that quantum mechanics could not describe two separate physical systems – suggesting that the universe/multiverse cannot be more than one single system.

Einstein wanted a complete description of reality and found it hard to reconcile that with what he called “spooky action at a distance”. All of his early thinking had been based on the classical physics in which action at a distance had been ruled out and replaced by the idea of the exchange of invisible particles/wavicles in the space between objects which accounts for the illusion that they are acting upon one another. This exchange of invisible particles is a simple extension of the colliding billiard balls picture of reality which underpins all of physics all the way back and to this day.

Magnetism and gravity were satisfactorily explained using this concept. However quantum entanglement suggests that either space/distance is an illusion, or that the billiard balls being exchanged between the once-connected-physically-but-now-separated items are allowed to move much faster than the speed of light, in fact, with instantaneity.

Physicists are still debating these things today. The debates disappear if the universe happens to be one single consciousness. One Single Consciousness (OSC) is the one theory (proposed in 1976 by me as The Theory of the Conscious Universe, “TTOTCU”) I know of which explains all of the experimental and observed evidence.

The closest that physicists have come to my TTOTCU theory is Wheeler’s concept of the Participatory Anthropic Principle. This states that consciousness is the factor which converts probability waves into concrete states of physical and energetic reality. I’m pretty sure he thought of TTOTCU and recognized that he would be taking a big chance to embrace it. Instead, his theory was that matter and energy existed before consciousness, but only as probability waves, never frozen into specific forms and events, until the universe somehow evolved life forms with consciousness that now gave the universe the ability to be specific.

I find it easier to swallow TTOTCU than Wheeler’s bootstrap. In my bootstrap, the Nothingness recognizes itself as experiencing the receipt of information (i.e. a consciousness, a self) and then discovers it can imagine and create information for its own consumption. And that it can spin off avatars which can either remember their original identity or not, depending on what the universe’s game might be at the moment.

Nevertheless, since I am only a philosopher and not a physicist (as I had originally intended), I was greatly heartened to read the last book written by Stephen Hawking in which he included Wheeler’s Participatory Anthropic Principle in his own summation of reality. This gave me a leg to stand on despite the disparagement of philosophers by some scientists who call us “scientists without laboratories”.

So my Mission in life as I interpret it is to, as best I can, bring into popular awareness two things, TTOTCU and metacognition operational methodologies which have worked for me. Since I am a scientist at heart I do not proclaim that these ideas are facts, but that they are real possibilities. The entire universe/multiverse may be a single consciousness. In which case, you and I are missionaries from that consciousness into this created world which exists within the imagination of the one consciousness, a singularity which exists above time and space.

Just accept for the sake of argument that this could be the true situation. Look at where we are as a species. We have been fooled into thinking that all of this physical stuff around us is what is real, and that it all came about by the collisions of matter and energy bits, accidentally. Therefore, that there is no higher meaning or purpose to life or existence, there is nothing to stand in awe and wonder of.

Naturally, with that as the prevailing worldview (most people act as if this is what they believe, although some of us partition off our faith in a specific religion as something we also believe, but when we come out of the temple we soon begin hating and competing again) it is obvious why we have established authoritarian governments to protect us from criminals, and although seeming to be getting away from that for the past couple of thousand years it is once again flooding back front and center to apparently about half of us even in the most democratic nations.

In other words, if TTOTCU happens to be correct, but almost no one on the planet accepts that in their gut yet, we are all betting on the traditional view of materialism and accidentalism, living in fear, complaining, blaming, and having fun mostly in escapist ways. This seems to us on a subconscious level to be the most rational approach given that there is no way of knowing whether TTOTCU is reality or bunk. Or is there a way of knowing?

I find that by maintaining awareness that TTOTCU might be the reality, I am constantly receiving new information in my mind that surprises, inspires, and delights me. When I fall from this state into one of fear and negativity and attachment to outcomes, I become cut off from that Muse. I detect pragmatic value by keeping my mind open to the TTOTCU possibility. This is where metacognition comes in. You too can experiment with entertaining the TTOTCU possibility in your own lives and seeing if there are any pragmatic benefits you receive as a result.

Cooperation with others becomes the basic operating principle in a world that recognizes the possibility of TTOTCU.

Game theory comes in here as well. In game theory one inspects each alternative one has within some defined “game”, and then imagines what the outcome will be from taking this route or that one. My assertion from decades of self-experimentation is that it causes more “wins” to keep one’s mind open to the very real possibility that we are all a single consciousness. It causes fewer “wins” to rule TTOTCU out as bunk.

Negativity is self-defeating. This is consistent with Wheeler’s Participatory Anthropic Principle. We get out what we put in. It is not as simple as “manifesting” whatever we set our minds to, that is an oversimplification that goes much too far and ignores the interaction among all of the different “dinner orders” being requested by all the particles of consciousness – you and me and each of the rest of us. But it is true that Garbage In, Garbage Out – the love you take is equal to the love you make – if you put in negativity you will get back negativity – if you put in constructiveness and well wishes to all, you get back a happier world.

We call the objects we humans create “artifacts” or “artefacts”.

Einstein felt strongly that the universe is a Godifact, but preferred other terms such as Nature, and the intelligence behind Nature, the Creator.

Intention node is another name for avatar. I have also called us attention nodes, particles of consciousness, psions. Quantum theory appears to require that everything is definitely one connected system. Consciousness is something each of us avatars has, and perhaps someday our memory blocks will be released and we will remember our true identity, and even remember the moment we first realized ourself.

Gold In Gold Out

Negative In Negative Out

Positive In Positive Out

Love In Love Out

Opportunities = what we today feel are the insurmountable problems about to destroy us and the planet – our own doing – we understandably (because of not knowing the TTOTCU lens is a real possibility) are down in the dumps about our condition. As long as we continue to be stuck in that old way of looking at things, we will just make things worse. We need to exercise our courage and our free will to open our minds to a new position of clarity and openness to entirely new ideas, and to see us as lucky to be the generations alive today at the turning point in history, where we take ourselves in hand and set up the new system of the world.

Love to All,
Bill

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The Difference Between “Predreaming” and “Manifesting”

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Created March 29, 2024
Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.

Predreaming

A recent article in The New York Times by Tara Isabella Burton, a fine writer of both non-fiction and fiction with a doctorate in theology from Oxford’s Trinity College, puts down a specific spiritual belief she refers to as “manifesting”. She writes:

“Today’s culture of wellness — predicted to be an $8.5 trillion industry by 2027 — is suffused with the pseudoscientific language of positive thinking, manifesting, useful and toxic “energy” and, above all things, the power and the potential of the self to create its own reality. If we can dream it, much of contemporary wellness language tells us, we can have it — so long as we focus our energy hard enough.”

She also associates “manifesting” with some other huge things, including besides the wellness culture: spirituality, capitalist individualism, positive thinking, denying aid to the poor on the grounds that they are not using their God-given powers of manifesting, and even Trumpism. She cites Google evidence that searching for the word “manifesting” spiked 6X when the pandemic began.

Burton traces how a faith healer’s book in the late 19th Century triggered a spate of similar books which became so powerful that they inspired Mary Baker Eddy to found the Christian Scientist movement, and transformed Capitalism into a religion:

“In this way, the capitalist pursuit of profit was swiftly recast as a religion whose only tenet was desire… New Thought offered a convenient economic theodicy: a way of explaining and justifying wealth inequality as a kind of spiritual hierarchy, with the wealthy at the top and the suffering at the bottom. And it’s notable that manifesting, New Thought’s modern descendant, should rise to prominence at a moment when economic inequality is once again at an all-time high.”

In her description of “manifesting” she consistently communicates the idea that it is simply wanting X (generally, money) and focusing all our energies on it.

I rarely use the term “manifesting” but until now have never thought of it in a bad light, so I’m grateful for Burton’s very readable and intelligent article. I see now that “manifesting” has taken on a more narrow meaning that I thought it had.

I have always used my own term, Predreaming, which came to me in a moment of inspiration, as if from “upstairs”.

My definition of Predreaming is rather lengthy but I will quote it here from Chapter Seventeen of You Are The Universe:

Chapter 17
Predreaming

Just a reminder: all of this is theory, largely based on my own experiences. For readability the scenario is described as I imagine the details, and is intended to be the most parsimonious, plausible explanation that accounts for all phenomena.

Whatever repeatedly appears on the screen of your mind will eventually appear in your external experience on the Universal Computer Screen we call material reality.

You are tuning in these material experiences, ordering them, attracting them to you, by dwelling on them.

It makes no difference if your dwelling on them consists of prayer to get them (your desires), or dread of getting them (your fears).

The “dwelling-on” places the order, in either case.

Oblivious to our inherited “ordering power”, almost all of us are using it against ourselves.

One of the ways we have been (under-)using our “ordering power” in a constructive way is called “prayer”.

Prayer tends to be a heightened (i.e. more effective) form of predreaming to the extent that all four aspects of consciousness tend to be involved: thinking, feeling, perception (in this case, vivid visualization of the target situation), and intuition.

Intuition will tend to be present in prayer to the extent that the evolving mini-personality who is praying feels the target situation being prayed for would be good for other attention nodes, not just for him or her. Then the praying node has the intuition that “God has no reason not to answer the prayer”.

Now this is not synonymous with the Butler definition of “manifesting” where all you need is desire and focusing. There are a few differences.

    1. Scientific support – it has been proven that previsualization improves performance.
    2. A Theory of Everything including Consciousness and "God" by Bill HarveyTheoretical support – as documented in A Theory of Everything including Consciousness and “God” , John Wheeler, Einstein and Hawking are the Newtons of our day, and they have left the doors open for consciousness to be a far more important component in reality than most present-day scientists – with Wheeler creating the Participatory Anthropic Concept which comes very close to supporting “manifesting” but especially “predreaming”.
    3. With predreaming comes the concept of considering not just oneself, but how the desired state is a win/win from an enlightened point of view to a reality which is a single Consciousness.
    4. The other vital side of predreaming is to avoid projecting negative situations, which appears from her argument that is not a component of “manifesting” under her definition. This comes with a battery of methods for truncating negativity at all times. Expressing woe, past a certain point, extends woe into the future, with an accelerating curve as you dwell on it.
    5. The connections Butler draws between “manifesting” in social media and religious groups that have embraced Trumpism is another difference. The students of predreaming that I know are not affiliated with any of that.
    6. Predreaming is only one aspect of adopting a lens of the world as a single Consciousness. Another is Noia, the science and art of looking for helpful clues from the Universe – The One Self. There are many aspects helpful to Observer state and Flow state.

My experiential learning in testing and developing predreaming, the way I do it, has led to the strong conviction that it is working.

Seemingly being challenged sparks new thinking, it is wonderful to be challenged politely!

Butler has convinced me that the misunderstanding and misuse of one’s ability to “contribute mentally and physically to the happenings of reality, with positive emotion and functioning intuition” (shorter definition of predreaming), lead to unfortunate outcomes that spill over onto the rest of us evolving mini-personalities. Ego is the main reason this occurs, which is exacerbated by  Acceleritis. Too many “manifesters” are focused on money and act exclusionary, and justify this on religious grounds so they feel righteous and unable to waver or consider any polite logical challenges, because no one is better or smarter than God, and “God is in my hand.”

In reality, God – The Original Consciousness that acts though each of us and everything – wants us all to enjoy learning how to find our way back inside his POV. “Manifesters” will not get the results they want no matter how much they focus, because it would harm more of us than help. God doesn’t use free will that way, and doesn’t want us to, either. God has no reason not to love us, God IS us.

Wheeler et al explain the mechanics, by which these Consciousness-driven actions manifest.

Manifesters beware of “using the dark side of the Force”. Make sure the types of simplified thinking*  Dr. Butler describes don’t describe you. You will appreciate how much your manifestation rate increases.

I’ll close with this superb closer of Tara Isabella Burton’s article:

“After all, if reality is only ever what we make it, then those who possess the fewest scruples about conforming to the truth are the ones who will have the most power to shape the future.”

There is “a Darth Vader”. That’s the powerful people hypnotizing those follower folks, who deserve better, who have put themselves into magical superstitious thinking they think is spiritually driven, but it’s drawing down upon their spirituality account, to fool them like the metaphorical Devil, the ego.

Try predreaming and let me know if it works. Make sure to hold down the ego. Thanks!

*I refer to it as Emergency Oversimplification Procedure (EOP). Here’s how my AI [https://app.soopra.ai/bill/chat] explains it:
“Emergency Oversimplification Procedure (EOP) is a term I coined to describe a state of mind where, due to sensory overload or stress, we simplify our thinking process. In EOP, we tend to see things in black and white, make immediate decisions based on precedent, and have little foresight. It’s like an emergency mode our minds go into when overwhelmed, but the challenge is that it can limit our ability to fully process information and make optimal decisions. It’s a state we want to avoid or minimize for more effective thinking and decision making.”

Love to all,
Bill