What is A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything?

If that's not a catchy blog post title, I don't know what is.

Yesterday I reread my author's preface to the Simple Explanation book's 2nd Edition, which was published in 2015, in both paperback and as a kindle ebook. It's a good introduction to the Simple Explanation theory of everything, and I don't think it has ever appeared here on the blog.  

Reading this may help put things into perspective.

A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything came to me during the winter of 2009. I was contemplating an entirely different project when, much to my delight, the Simple Explanation presented itself on the page, diagrams and all.

A Simple Explanation begins by turning the ordinary  view of consciousness on its head. Whereas most scientists believe consciousness is a by-product of the brain, I propose that consciousness is the ground state of the universe, here long before there were any brains. 

Using only four basic principles, A Simple Explanation describes our universe as a fractal pattern of consciousness that repeats itself in endless cycles of information, organization, and cooperation, from the smallest quanta through the largest astronomical objects. 

In 1979 I first read Itzhak Bentov’s book, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, wherein Bentov first proposed a torus-shaped,  universal consciousness.

About a year into writing the Simple Explanation blog, I realized that what I call the conscious “fractal” universe is very similar to the meme Bentov identified as the conscious “holographic” universe. By holographic, Bentov referred to the fact that any small fragment of a holographic image can be used to reproduce the entire image out of which the fragment came. 

The same can be said of fractal patterns: the fractal formula repeats itself at both upwardly-larger and downwardly-smaller scales so that any fragment at any scale of the fractal’s image reflects an eerily repetitive pattern. If you don’t know what a fractal is, relax; lots more about fractals later.

As for the tori, I’ve been doodling them in the margins of papers and inscribing them on notes and cards since I first read Bentov’s book. I even embroidered two tori into the pattern of a house blessing back in 1982, and I’ve been meditating on the torus ever since.

Cross-stitched House Blessing, 1982.

Close-up of House Blessing. Note the two green and gold tori flanking the center florets.

Cyd Ropp, chalk torus

Cyd Ropp, slinky torus

When I first began writing the Simple Explanation blog, it was tough finding images of a torus online, so I drew my own using colored chalk. In the past couple of years, images of tori have blossomed online, including quite a few of my own. 2012 even saw the release of a feature film called “Thrive,” promoting egalitarian reform through free toroidal energy. 

The Simple Explanation of this sudden whirlwind of tori is that we are all resonating to and concurrently invoking the same torus from the universe’s shared transpersonal consciousness. And the more we each individually explore and tap out this meme, the stronger it becomes, because memes are starved through lack of usage and reinforced through invocation.

If you don’t know what a “torus” is, don’t worry. This book will explain all that. Same thing with other unusual words like “fractal,”  “meme,” and “transpersonal consciousness.” You don’t need to be a philosopher or a Yogi to grasp the Simple Explanation. You don’t even need a college degree. All you need is an open mind and a willingness to think new thoughts. So go slow. I’m going to explain every Simple Explanation idea over and over, in various ways, throughout this short book. 

Cyd Ropp, Universal Torus

Simplicity Is Not Reductionism

Every once in a while, someone I'm talking with reacts poorly to the very notion that complex concepts should or could be simplified--as if this Simple Explanation blog contributes to "dumbing down" science, philosophy, religion, and metaphysics. "Your theory is nothing but pure fantasy and speculation," I hear them say.

Well, I've got news for them-- All axioms are fundamentally unprovable. This is true in science, in logic, and in math. Fundamental propositions are assumed to be true. All of these axioms are in fact intuitive. So the criticism that the Simple Explanation is intuitive is a false criticism, as the same can be said of all science, logic, and math. According to U.C. Berkeley's Understanding Science website: 

"All of science is based on a few fundamental assumptions that transcend any individual experiment or study."

Understanding Science goes on to explain that, while the fundamental propositions may be assumptions, they generate testable hypotheses that can verify the assumptions. The Simple Explanation is not unscientific--it verifies its hypotheses through observation and by mining other people's research findings, amply demonstrating its theoretical robustness.

I talked this over with my brother, Bill, the philosopher, and he felt it was very important to explain the difference between "simplicity" and "reductionism." So here goes.

Simplicity is not reductionism. 

Simplicity as I use the term involves stripping away layers of linguistic and cultural particulars to reveal underlying universal patterns. According to the Simple Explanation, once memes are lifted out of their familiar linguistic and cultural expressions, their universal applicability can be readily discerned.

Reductionism, on the other hand, narrows the focus of exploration by pursuing information from smaller and smaller objects, as in the way physicists look for ever smaller particles and wave forms to explain the composition of our universe. Hand in hand with this pursuit is the assumption that an object can be reduced to its tiniest components and that this will reveal its underlying nature.

I'm happy to see that according to wikipedia, Bill and I are not alone in our distrust of reductionism. Apparently reductionism doesn't go over so well with ecologists or systems theorists, because interactive systems can't be described by their smallest objects but must be described in terms of relationships and interactions. From the wiki article on reductionism: "Disciplines such as cybernetics and systems theory embrace a non-reductionist view of science, sometimes going as far as explaining phenomena at a given level of hierarchy in terms of phenomena at a higher level, in a sense, the opposite of a reductionist approach.^[24]"

So, while conventional science believes itself to be thoroughly pursuing truth through reductionism, the Simple Explanation would say it is more like they are trying to describe the haystack by counting the number of its molecules. Yes, it is a measurable result, but meaningless.

Again, from wikipedia: "Methodological reductionism is the position that the best scientific strategy is to attempt to reduce explanations to the smallest possible entities. Methodological reductionism would thus hold that the atomic explanation of a substance's boiling point is preferable to the chemical explanation, and that an explanation based on even smaller particles (quarks and leptons, perhaps) would be even better. Methodological reductionism, therefore, is the position that all scientific theories either can or should be reduced to a single super~theory through the process of theoretical reduction.

Here at the Simple Explanation, simplicity means "elegance"--the simplest theory that explains the most evidence. But unlike methodological reductionism, the Simple Explanation does not restrict truth to the tiny.The simplicity pursued by the Simple Explanation is of an entirely different kind--a true theory of everything looks for the underlying reality of our cosmos, irregardless of where it is to be found. 

"Most Realistic Black Hole" Looks a Lot Like the Simple Explanation

This article was posted this morning on Huffington Post. Wanted to share the video animation with you.  Look familiar?  Same dynamics. This is one of the primal fractal expressions of toroidal flow. 

Here's the Huffington article:

Behold The Most Realistic Black Hole Simulation Yet

The Huffington Post  |  By Jacqueline Howard

Posted: 04/22/2015 8:26 am EDT Updated: 04/22/2015 8:59 am EDT

What happens when two black holes collide? Spectacular new simulations show the swirling action like never before, and they're definitely worth a watch.

Dr. Stuart Shapiro, professor of physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, presented the simulations in Baltimore on April 13 at a meeting of theAmerican Physical Society.

"Our simulations of binary black holes merging in circumbinary magnetized disks of gas allow us to probe a cosmic event that astronomers believe occurs in distant active galaxies and quasars," Shapiro told The Huffington Post in an email.

(Story continues below.)

A sped-up version of one of the video simulations. (Click to see original).

Using Einstein's theory. What sets these black hole simulations apart from previous examples? The researchers used a full-blown treatment of Einstein's general theory of relativity to build their 3D simulation models on supercomputers -- marking the first time such simulations were done without having to guesstimate the data, Nature reported.

Einstein's equations describe the gravitational field around a black hole, and the researchers developed a mathematical model to pair the equations with equations that account for the motion of matter and magnetic fields.

“As a technical achievement, there’s no doubt that this is a giant step forward,” Dr. Cole Miller, a University of Maryland astronomer who was not involved in the research, told Nature.

Timely simulations. The new simulations come at just the right time. Last March, astronomers provided evidence of two black holes on paths to collide. Their research -- along with the new simulations -- could shed light on how black holes get close enough to merge.

Holy moly.