A Simple Explanation of Panpsychism

I feel as though the Simple Explanation has finally arrived on the doorstep of respectability. Panpsychism is in the news, thanks to journalist Olivia Goldhill's article for Quartz. What is panpsychism? It's the idea that consciousness resides within every thing. Moreover, aggregations of simple consciousness add up to more complex forms that may become conscious once they form an object that requires cooperation among its many parts.

Yes, you have read all of this before if you are at all familiar with my Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. Now there's a word for it: panpsychism. Pan--Greek for "everything"; psyche--Greek for "mind/soul/consciousness"; ism: a field of study. You can read Olivia Goldhill's article on the state of panpsychism below.  

The idea that everything from spoons to stones are conscious is gaining academic credibility

WRITTEN BY Olivia Goldhill  January 27, 2018

Consciousness permeates reality. Rather than being just a unique feature of human subjective experience, it’s the foundation of the universe, present in every particle and all physical matter.

This sounds like easily-dismissible bunkum, but as traditional attempts to explain consciousness continue to fail, the “panpsychist” view is increasingly being taken seriously by credible philosophers, neuroscientists, and physicists, including figures such as neuroscientist Christof Koch and physicist Roger Penrose.

“Why should we think common sense is a good guide to what the universe is like?” says Philip Goff, a philosophy professor at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. “Einstein tells us weird things about the nature of time that counters common sense; quantum mechanics runs counter to common sense. Our intuitive reaction isn’t necessarily a good guide to the nature of reality.”

David Chalmers, a philosophy of mind professor at New York University, laid out the “hard problem of consciousness” in 1995, demonstrating that there was still no answer to the question of what causes consciousness. Traditionally, two dominant perspectives, materialism and dualism, have provided a framework for solving this problem. Both lead to seemingly intractable complications.

 “Physics is just structure. It can explain biology, but there’s a gap: Consciousness.” The materialist viewpoint states that consciousness is derived entirely from physical matter. It’s unclear, though, exactly how this could work. “It’s very hard to get consciousness out of non-consciousness,” says Chalmers. “Physics is just structure. It can explain biology, but there’s a gap: Consciousness.” Dualism holds that consciousness is separate and distinct from physical matter—but that then raises the question of how consciousness interacts and has an effect on the physical world.

Panpsychism offers an attractive alternative solution: Consciousness is a fundamental feature of physical matter; every single particle in existence has an “unimaginably simple” form of consciousness, says Goff. These particles then come together to form more complex forms of consciousness, such as humans’ subjective experiences. This isn’t meant to imply that particles have a coherent worldview or actively think, merely that there’s some inherent subjective experience of consciousness in even the tiniest particle.

Panpsychism doesn’t necessarily imply that every inanimate object is conscious. “Panpsychists usually don’t take tables and other artifacts to be conscious as a whole,” writes Hedda Hassel Mørch, a philosophy researcher at New York University’s Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, in an email. “Rather, the table could be understood as a collection of particles that each have their own very simple form of consciousness.”

But, then again, panpsychism could very well imply that conscious tables exist: One interpretation of the theory holds that “any system is conscious,” says Chalmers. “Rocks will be conscious, spoons will be conscious, the Earth will be conscious. Any kind of aggregation gives you consciousness.”

Interest in panpsychism has grown in part thanks to the increased academic focus on consciousness itself following on from Chalmers’ “hard problem” paper. Philosophers at NYU, home to one of the leading philosophy-of-mind departments, have made panpsychism a feature of serious study. There have been several credible academic books on the subject in recent years, and popular articles taking panpsychism seriously.

One of the most popular and credible contemporary neuroscience theories on consciousness, Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory, further lends credence to panpsychism. Tononi argues that something will have a form of “consciousness” if the information contained within the structure is sufficiently “integrated,” or unified, and so the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Because it applies to all structures—not just the human brain—Integrated Information Theory shares the panpsychist view that physical matter has innate conscious experience.

Goff, who has written an academic book on consciousness and is working on another that approaches the subject from a more popular-science perspective, notes that there were credible theories on the subject dating back to the 1920s. Thinkers including philosopher Bertrand Russell and physicist Arthur Eddington made a serious case for panpsychism, but the field lost momentum after World War II, when philosophy became largely focused on analytic philosophical questions of language and logic. Interest picked up again in the 2000s, thanks both to recognition of the “hard problem” and to increased adoption of the structural-realist approach in physics, explains Chalmers. This approach views physics as describing structure, and not the underlying nonstructural elements.

“Physical science tells us a lot less about the nature of matter than we tend to assume,” says Goff. “Eddington”—the English scientist who experimentally confirmed Einstein’s theory of general relativity in the early 20th century—“argued there’s a gap in our picture of the universe. We know what matter does but not what it is. We can put consciousness into this gap.”

 “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” 

In Eddington’s view, Goff writes in an email, it’s “”silly” to suppose that that underlying nature has nothing to do with consciousness and then to wonder where consciousness comes from.” Stephen Hawking has previously asked: “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” Goff adds: “The Russell-Eddington proposal is that it is consciousness that breathes fire into the equations.”

The biggest problem caused by panpsychism is known as the “combination problem”: Precisely how do small particles of consciousness collectively form more complex consciousness? Consciousness may exist in all particles, but that doesn’t answer the question of how these tiny fragments of physical consciousness come together to create the more complex experience of human consciousness.

Any theory that attempts to answer that question, would effectively determine which complex systems—from inanimate objects to plants to ants—count as conscious.

An alternative panpsychist perspective holds that, rather than individual particles holding consciousness and coming together, the universe as a whole is conscious. This, says Goff, isn’t the same as believing the universe is a unified divine being; it’s more like seeing it as a “cosmic mess.” Nevertheless, it does reflect a perspective that the world is a top-down creation, where every individual thing is derived from the universe, rather than a bottom-up version where objects are built from the smallest particles. Goff believes quantum entanglement—the finding that certain particles behave as a single unified system even when they’re separated by such immense distances there can’t be a causal signal between them—suggests the universe functions as a fundamental whole rather than a collection of discrete parts.

Such theories sound incredible, and perhaps they are. But then again, so is every other possible theory that explains consciousness. “The more I think about [any theory], the less plausible it becomes,” says Chalmers. “One starts as a materialist, then turns into a dualist, then a panpsychist, then an idealist,” he adds, echoing his paper on the subject. Idealism holds that conscious experience is the only thing that truly exists. From that perspective, panpsychism is quite moderate.

Chalmers quotes his colleague, the philosopher John Perry, who says: “If you think about consciousness long enough, you either become a panpsychist or you go into administration.”

You can find the above article at Quartz: https://qz.com/1184574/the-idea-that-everything-from-spoons-to-stones-are-conscious-is-gaining-academic-credibility/

****

Of course, I'm only on the doorstep of respectability. No attributions for Cyd Ropp, Ph.D., independent philosopher; No invites to conferences with the in- crowd. No endorsements from puzzled former advisors and fellow academics. No mention in the wikipedia article on panpsychism.  Ah well, maybe someday.

Meanwhile, here's one of my popular videos on the topic, called "A Simple Fractal Model of the Conscious Universe." Easy to understand. Really. 

Onward and upward!

A Simple Explanation of Immanence, or Inherent Consciousness

Scientists generally say that consciousness is a by-product of brains, and while organisms without brains may be reactive to stimuli, they are certainly not what you would call "conscious." The Simple Explanation, on the other hand, starts from the premise that consciousness is inherent in all matter.

The Simple Explanation proposes that our universe is fully conscious, from the tiniest material manifestations of the sub-atomic level through material aggregations of ever-increasing complexity and scope until it scales up to the most complex consciousness of all--the Very Large Universal Consciousness encompassing the sum of our universe's aggregate structures and processes. Indeed, the very ground state that forms the matrix of our universe, irrespective of material, is consciousness-without-thought. 

Each piece of material "knows how" to do its job in the niche it occupies. 

(visit the Simple Explanation blog)

As you can see from the diagram, our Universe is organized into increasingly larger and larger aggregations of objects and the processes required to arrange and maintain them. The Simple Explanation is a form of "intelligent design" in claiming that the matter and processes of our universe are driven by the consciousness inherent within it, and not by randomness or chaos. In this sense, the Simple Explanation is reminiscent of philosophies that talk about "Divine Immanence." 

According to the Simple Explanation, every unit of consciousness "knows how" to do the job it occupies. The scope of its knowledge and the breadth of its responsibilities becomes greater as it occupies niches of increasing complexity, but even the tiniest sub-atomic particles "know how" to do their jobs, just as a sunflower "knows how" to be a sunflower, a cloud "knows how" to be a cloud,  and a cat "knows how" to be a cat. From the micro level on up, particle-like waves "reach out" to others and "work together" to make larger and larger particles, atoms, molecules, and elements, forming the material bedrock of our universe. 

In this manner, inanimate material "behaves" no differently than life forms. Each of these pieces of material "knows how" to do the job slot it occupies. A hydrogen atom possesses the organizational capacity to be the hydrogen atom; it also "knows how" to reach out to other atoms to make molecules. Similarly, life forms put themselves together by building organelles and cells out of proteins and other cellular precursors, using very complicated arrangements and mechanisms for sub-cellular entities. Likewise, a stem cell mysteriously "knows how" to differentiate into just the cell needed to do the job. 

Oddly enough, while the concept of "very tiny up through very large" works well enough when applied to the amount of information needed to run a physical process, it doesn't really describe the amount of potential consciousness a material unit inherently possesses. This is because each and every unit of consciousness, no matter how tiny or large its vehicle, is a fractal of the entire overarching consciousness and, as such, inherently possesses the potential for all knowledge. 

The amount of information a piece of material can utilize and manipulate has more to do with its place in the overall structure and what it needs to know in order to do its job, not whether it is a life form or not, or whether or not it has a brain. In this Simple model, consciousness is inherent in all material, while knowledge is relative to an entity's niche and point of view, and information is valued according to its personal utility and its usefulness to the overall good.

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

Simple Explanation Videos -- 40 minutes sure to shift your paradigm

The talk at Kindred Journeys went very well. The little room was full. The energy was high. My friends brought friends and there were people there who came because of an online events posting in The Reader. Karyl videotaped the talk, and here are the links below. Sold a couple of books and a couple of the new audio books, too. I had been wondering whether or not people would understand what I was saying, but they all tracked very well. There were many props used as illustrations--broccoli for fractals; a mandarin orange, a little pumpkin, and the slinky for toroids; and too many posters with too much writing on them for the other concepts. My brother, Billy, introduced me, and then he came away with several new hypnosis clients afterwards, on top of it. The amazing thing is that I was able to explain the entire Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything in about 50 minutes. Talk about a challenge!
Here's the first 44 minutes of footage from the talk, before the video cut out. This is raw footage, unedited. We'll do a better job next time. Meanwhile, enjoy the videos! Please pass this along to your friends, too.

Below you can see the posters in close-up; be sure to watch the videos for a detailed explanation.

The Simple Explanation philosophy can be boiled down to four basic concepts. These concepts are fully explained in the book, "A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything," by Cyd Ropp, Ph.D.

This Simple Golden Rule sums up all world religions and ethical systems. It applies equally to all units of consciousness throughout the universe, from sub-atomic particles up through "sentient" creatures and beyond. Whether you are a human, a skin cell, or a solar system, it is your job to reach out to others with love, aid, and information for the betterment of all. This makes all units of consciousness "happy." Joining with others in a common goal also happens to fractally level up to the next hierarchical jump. (atoms to molecules, cells to organs, people to society, etc,)

The Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything identifies this torus as the primordial fractal of our universe.

Zero-point emitter at the center of our universe, pushing out space, matter, and time into this dimension. The inward-poking pressure wraps over the lip and falls into the vortex leading to the singularity, compressing potential that inverses and explodes outward into our 3-D universe as manifestation.

The arrow of time flows from uncollapsed potential, through here and now, and emerges as history. i.e. "karma"

There are countless units of consciousness inside this skin of mine, making up "me."

Nested Hierarchies--the bottom triangle represents a single organism; the top triangle shows how it fractally nests into the hierarchy above.

All About the Simple Conscious Universe

Here's Chapter Two of the Simple Explanation book. You've seen most of this in other articles, but now it's in one, coherent narrative. I've also updated the diagrams and corrected some minor points. This is the chapter introducing Units of Consciousness, fractals, and quantum mechanics. Buy the Simple Explanation book here.

Chapter Two

A Simple Fractal Model of the Conscious Universe

Each Unit of Consciousness (UC) is a pale echo of the Universal Unit of Consciousness. Or, to put it another way, each UC is a fractal replication of the Universal UC. So before we go any further, let’s talk more about fractals.

In 1975, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot coined the term “fractal” in the first published paper on fractal geometry. Despite some initial resistance from the mathematical community, it was soon discovered that fractal geometry is unparalleled at measuring and modeling the world of natural phenomena.

Here's the definition of fractals from Wikipedia: “A fractal is 'a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole,' a property called self-similarity... Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex

This means that, as you can see by the pictures, a fractal design’s pattern repeats itself over and over again without end. The copies it produces are very similar but also slightly unique, as each iteration of the formula takes into account the results, or history, of the previous computation.

Romanesco broccoli displays a simple, self-similar pattern of conical florets repeating several times at smaller and smaller scales. The fractal formula that describes this broccoli can go on forever dividing the conical florets into smaller and smaller iterations of the mother cone.

To put the Simple Explanation in fractal terms, our universe is populated by simple, recursive, self-similar structures of consciousness at arbitrarily small scales.

As explained in Chapter 1, as our universe expanded, over and over and over again, pale echoes of the Universal Unit of Consciousness attached themselves to the particles streaming out of the Big Bang. These self-replicating Units of Consciousness (UCs) can be described as fractal emanations of the originating fractal formula--the Universal UC.

Whereas Mandlebrot's best-known fractal, the Mandlebrot Set, looks like this bug below,

the fractal associated with the Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything looks like this torus.

In the Simple Explanation, the enclosure of our material Universe is a Very Large toroidal pattern at the "outside" edge of creation. This would be the Universal pattern at its largest fractal scale, the Universal UC, akin to the singular black void at the center of the Mandlebrot Set. Drilling downward from the greatest torus (the Universal UC) to smallest, the Units of Consciousness associated with sub-atomic particles are the smallest manifest fractal expressions of the Universal set. These smallest material instantiations of creation pass from the realm of pure consciousness through causal energy to material instantiation through calculations of the Universal fractal formula. The crossover from pure consciousness to material instantiation occurs at the edge of an infinite series of ever smaller fractal divisions proceeding downward from the lower limit of material instantiation (Planck's constant), and then energetically finer and finer until energy is finally suspended in the infinite stillness of non-being, the Metaverse.

In the Simple Explanation, the zero point at the center of the universal toroid is the source point where the pure undifferentiated consciousness of the metaverse is concentrated to singular manifestation. This is the crossover location between the undifferentiated unity and material creation.

The personality we call God manages this Universe's collective karmic record and all of our memes (beliefs and narratives) as well as the physical laws of the material realm.

In personal terms, my Self UC is a fractal division of the Universal UC, and so is every UC associated with everything in my body. The fractal calculations occur at every hierarchical jump of organizational complexity.

One spiritual implication of this fractal model is that the Universal UC may be visualized as both immanent and transcendent, as many spiritual traditions claim. Immanent within every one of my body's UCs, at the tiniest fractal crossover point at the center of each UC. Transcendent at the outer edge of the Very Large, where our Universal UC nests against the infinite, undifferentiated Metaversal UC ("God the Father," "Sat," "Pure Consciousness," the "Undifferentiated Unity"). We humans are suspended thusly, a particular fractal emanation of, and located within, creation, yet patterned directly from pure consciousness.

Now that we understand what the Simple Explanation means by fractal consciousness, let’s look at some of the features of these fractal UCs.

Units of Consciousness:

Each UC reflects a unique point of view in time and space.

All UCs are inwardly resonating waves propagated within the shell of the Universal UC, therefore all UCs are standing exactly in the same no-place. I am exactly where you are, where we all are. I am exactly where the UC of a quark is, where the UC of a skin cell is. I am no bigger or smaller than any other UC because size is irrelevant where there is no space, and there is no space “outside,” in the metaverse, where the Universal UC is situated. No matter the size or complexity of the material to which the UC is attached, from quanta to human to star system, our UCs are all the same no-size in the same no-place.

There is only one apparent time and place in the universe for any given observer. That place is always right here, right now, at this moment of conscious awareness. All units of consciousness realize their decision-making potential only in the crucible of here and now.

Each UC is capable of using the organizing principles that inform and sustain its existence in our universe. Quanta know how to be quanta; stars know how to be stars; lung cells know how to be lung cells; dogs know how to be dogs. Each UC is fully capable of doing the job put to the material it governs when it follows universal principles (the Tao, God’s Will, Absolute Truth, physics).

Every UC makes decisions affecting the material it governs. (A hydrogen atom, for example, decides whether or not and with which particular two oxygen atoms it will join to form a molecule of water, informed by various physical laws of the universe including its own “karma,” or history of past choices. An organism’s UC decides what to eat, when to mate, where to nest, and so on.)

UCs are social and additive in number— neighboring UCs tend to work together in harmony toward a common purpose.

All UCs aggregate hierarchically under more complex UCs. The more complex the UC, the fewer instances of it exist.

Life forms consist of the aggregated UCs of the material forming their bodies, plus the Self UC. The more complex the organism, the more UCs it possesses.

The degree to which any UC comprehends the physical universe is dependent upon the complexity of its aggregate UCs. There are so many little quanta UCs and atomic UCs that, despite their very simple material expression, they still have a pretty firm grasp of the Universe because they are all over the place. But their responsibilities are very narrowly defined--a quanta may only have one choice to make in its whole life, so that individual quanta's UC isn’t in a position to decide anything else. But, when you consider all of the quanta in this Universe, together they know everything there is to know about atomic structure. Actually, at the simplest level of material instantiation there is very little delusion, as the quantum UCs are so fresh and near the "center" where information streams in from the Metaverse.

The more UCs of the same level of complexity that are laterally linked, the greater their shared perception of here and now. This means, for example, that when you add all of the UCs together that make up my material body, their aggregated consciousness is about as aware as my singular Self UC. And those aggregated UCs (the “mud” and “meat” that make up my body) go everywhere I go!

Every UC has the free will to fulfill or contradict its responsibilities. The more complex the UC, the more sophisticated its decision-making abilities. The more complex the UC, the more opportunities it has to exercise free will. Despite the opportunity for free will, most UCs perform as expected—they “do their part,” they “work according to plan.”

Each functional organ system within an organism possesses its own UC that governs that organ. The lung UC governs the lung cells and coordinates laterally with the other organs; the brain UC governs the nervous system and works laterally with the other organs to maintain the body.

The Universal UC is the most complex UC of all, consisting of all potential as well as actual UCs of our universe, plus its own metaversal omniscience and organizational principles.

As complex systems die and disintegrate, their aggregated UCs are released from the responsibility of supporting that particular life or material instantiation and revert to their simpler states of molecular consciousness. A dead organism’s governing UC no longer presides over the aggregate, nor do the organ systems’ UCs remain after their organs shut down. Cellular UCs will remain until their cells die. The body’s molecular UCs hold it together until their cohesion degrades and only atomic UCs are left. And so on. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

Departing UCs rejoin the Universal UC.

All UCs are self-aware, self-governing, with free will. You don't have to reach any level of sophistication to be a governing UC. Every UC governs the piece of material it is attached to, regardless of how simple or inert the material appears to us humans.

Free Will and Quantum Foam

This illustration from Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe shows how the appearance of matter transforms from smooth to chaotic at quantum level magnification. As depicted here, things look smoothest at the lowest magnification and appear increasingly active the closer you look.

The quantum chaos illustrated above can be used to model the principle of individual free will. Looking at the illustration, the lowest magnification at the bottom of the tower appears smooth because most of the UCs are performing more or less as expected. On the top plane, at the highest magnification, the free will decisions made by the sea of UCs reveal their individuality.  

UCs are not automatons nor interchangeable bricks in a wall, but entities with free will. If a lateral cohort of UCs decides to not work together, then chaos will win out and the erstwhile structure they formed will collapse.

It is to the benefit of all that most UCs operate according to the metaversal plan and that there is enough redundancy of duties to accommodate each UC's free-will decisions. It is only when examining each individual UC's activities up close that the chaotic nature of free will is even detectable.

My Self, the Governor of Whoville

Collections of UCs have a governing Self UC one step higher up the hierarchical chain than the aggregation making up their body and its systems. This means, for example, that each atom’s Self UC governs its collection of sub-atomic particles and makes the atomic-level decisions; UCs of molecules govern their collected atoms and make molecular-level decisions, and so on.

“I” am the aggregate UCs of my material body, from the subatomic particles to molecules to cells, all the way up through the UCs of the body’s organ systems. Plus, “I” am also the self-aware unit of consciousness generated at conception. Like all UCs, this capital-letter “Self” came into this universe as a perfect echo of the Universal UC. The job of this Self UC is to oversee the body’s aggregate UCs and to join laterally with other UCs like myself to build things.

As you can see by the diagram below, the simpler the UC, the more of them there are, while the more organized and complex the UC, the fewer of them there are. While there is only one "me" (represented by the triangle), my body is comprised of 11 organ systems made of 78 organs, which are in turn comprised of 50 trillion specialized cells made up of such a large number of atoms and molecules that I don't know how to read or write the numbers. And every hierarchical jump in complexity brings a new UC into the world along with the newly formed object. That’s a lot of UCs in here with “me!” I affectionately refer to my aggregation of UCs as “Whoville” and our body as “Meat Mountain.” I am the Governor of Whoville. You have your own Whoville and Meat Mountain. Our UCs are tied to these various material instantiations and so have become localized in time and space, and are no longer omniscient and omnipresent but only so many pieces of matter, or "mud."

Although it may feel as though I am the only conscious entity inhabiting this body of mine, my physical body is actually home to all of these aggregated UCs, each with their own jobs to perform, each making the decisions put to them, each laying down their own karmic record. Lucky for me, their job is to hold me together and facilitate this life of mine, and they generally go along with the program and do a good job.

Note that the "mind" or ordinary consciousness, as well as the subconscious, are artifacts of the organ systems, organs, and cells that make up the body. In other words, the mind is the meat's thought process, not the Self's. The mind usually works on behalf of the ego through the efforts of Whoville, whereas the Self UC works on behalf of the Universal UC, often without thought.

The Self UC isn't always doing its job of conscious decision-making. The human mind may be preoccupied with thoughts or songs or emotions, which blocks the Self UC from making any here-and-now decisions. This leaves most decisions up to the body's aggregate UCs. Activities like walking or driving a car, having sex, eating, or taking a bath can all be carried out by the body's organ level UCs and “mind” outside the Self’s awareness.

“I” am influenced in my decision-making by many forces acting upon me as I approach the here and now. These forces include the karmic records and meme bundles of my Self UC and my body’s aggregate UCs, and the karma and memes of those around me. Despite the multitude of influences acting upon me, it is always within my power to make a free-will decision at any particular moment.

The Fractal Roots of Consciousness

To recap: Within the confines of my skin, countless UCs of varying levels of complexity work together to keep my body alive and fully functional. At each descending level of complexity, from my governing Self UC down through the organ systems, organs, cells, organelles, molecules, atoms, and quanta, my body's UCs deal with increasingly simpler tasks even as the matter associated with them becomes smaller and more numerous. The simplest and most numerous level of materially instantiated consciousness is associated with the quantum foam that forms at the finest fractal edge between matter and energy.

As the roots of a plant send out finer and finer tendrils at each level of fractal branching, our hierarchically arranged aggregate UCs seem to nest closer and closer to the Original Fractal Formula--the Universal UC--at their simplest and most numerous levels. Whereas the concerns of the world often obscure my human-level Self UC, the UC of a single sub-atomic particle or wave (anu), having a fairly limited view of creation and few choices regarding activity, is the least distracted by Ego and most attuned with its originating Source.

At the deepest physical level of instantiation, the countless quanta that form the building blocks of our bodies are associated with countless less-deluded UCs, all tapping their roots directly into the organizational source of our Universe ("Universal UC," "God," "Sat," "Original Fractal Formula").

As I visualize the roots of Whoville, I visualize roots penetrating from my skin inward, finer and finer, to the depths of my material being. Within my body, all of my aggregated UCs drill fractally "backward," smaller and smaller, toward the zero-point field at our shared core. Whereas my Self UC may appear a long way off from God, especially if I conceive of God outside the Very Large, if I instead turn inward and "fall back," I am as near to God as the center point of all of Whoville's myriad UCs. This is a new way to interpret the practices of "centering" and "grounding." When ancient teachings speak of God residing in the hearts of man, this Simple Explanation suggests the heart may be interpreted as the shared zero-point field at the shared center of our fractal Units of Consciousness.

A Simple Explanation of "The Great Commandment"

Known as "The Great Commandment" in Judaism, Leviticus 19:18 states: “ Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” This commandment is reiterated by Jesus and Paul several times in the New Testament, as here when Jesus counsels the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:19, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Commentaries on this commandment usually focus on its Golden Rule aspect--to treat others as you would wish to be treated. The Simple Explanation puts it this way: "In order for units of consciousness to join and work together for the greater good, they need to share information relevant to the current situation, they need to be in harmony with the metaversal plan, and they need to love one another."

While we human-level UCs often struggle with loving others, many of us also struggle with loving ourselves, so how do we accomplish the Great Commandment?

It may help to realize that "I" am not alone in this body of mine, but co-inhabit this material space with countless other UCs devoted to instantiating "my" body. The commandment to "love myself" is a reminder to be kind and wise in the governance of the UCs that make up my Self's body. I am the ruler of their galaxy--I am the "Governor of Whoville," to borrow from Dr. Seuss.

When I ignore the information coming "upline" from my aggregated UCs, my physical body may suffer emotionally and physically. If I ignore my aggregated UCs altogether, they are like sheep without a shepherd, and my emotional and physical body will surely suffer. I must be the wise ruler of this body, as it is my governing Self UC that is responsible for this little galaxy. This can be considered the essential rationale for loving myself. It is not my own Ego I am loving--it is Whoville’s galaxy of devoted UCs.

If I cannot act with wisdom and love toward my own mud and meat, then how can I act with wisdom and love toward other UCs at the lateral level--my "neighbors"? The "neighbor" that I am commanded to love is any nearby unit of consciousness. It is the job of every UC, no matter its hierarchical level of complexity and sophistication, to work together for the good of all. A human's neighbor would be other hierarchically-similar UCs in common purpose (human and non-human), but also “downline” to Whoville, and “upline” as part of some greater purpose.

Lao Tzu put it this way in Verse 68 of the Tao Te Ching: “The best way to win a battle is to avoid confrontation. The best way to get the job done is to make sure that others’ needs are met. This ancient principle is known as 'living in harmony' with your fellow UCs. Living in harmony brings out the best in others. When you live in perfect harmony with others, you live in perfect harmony with the metaverse.”

All of creation is called upon to work together with others for the survival and benefit of all. This is a Simple Explanation of The Great Commandment.  

Quantum Entanglement and Karma--

Matter behaves differently at the very small level than it does at our ordinary, visible level. At the smallest levels of material instantiation, two objects can be "entangled," meaning that what happens to one object affects what happens to its partner.

For quantum particles to be entangled, they must both have been part of the same larger system/object at one time. When the larger object to which they both belonged no longer holds its integrity, its parts are no longer physically yoked. These now freed quantum particles may relocate to entirely different places in the universe, but they never forget their original family, so what happens to their previous family members continues to affect them. That's a simple explanation of quantum entanglement.

Quantum superposition refers to the universe's unending balancing act that preserves perfect poise amongst entangled quanta. So let's say you have a pair of entangled photons and that these two photons know how to spin right and left. What happens with superposition is this: if you cause entangled photon A to spin to the right, photon B will, of its own accord, and without you touching it, spin to the left. This quality of superposition makes "action at a distance" possible because you don't have to do anything at all to photon B to make it do something. You only have to affect photon A. Furthermore, it turns out that if A is entangled with B, and B becomes subsequently entangled with C, then A and C are now also entangled. This is known as entanglement swapping.

The new field of quantum computing takes advantage of these properties of entanglement to transfer and store information. In quantum computing, entangled particles are created by blasting apart their family unit and trapping the subsequent quanta in a computer matrix, called a "register." The quanta trapped in the register then respond to stimulation and perform calculations (i.e. make choices). Our universe is a giant quantum register.

The principle behind teleportation works off these same principles: it is possible, theoretically, to prompt changes amongst entangled objects so that it appears as though an object has travelled from one place to another. But nothing “travelled” anywhere. Not even information. It is the relationship amongst the entangled objects that causes manipulations at A to result in predictable changes in B and C.

Superposition is a word that refers to the fact that entangled objects will not reveal their superposition outcomes until one of them makes a choice when prodded to do so. Up until that choice point, either one of the entangled pair may be the one to, for example, spin right, which would force the other to spin left to maintain universal balance. If, on the other hand, the object was made to spin left, then its supersymmetric partner would be the one to spin right.

Karma and Consciousness

Through quantum entanglement we can now model a dynamic mechanism for karma. The Simple Explanation suggests that sub-atomic quanta are simply a fractal order of magnitude step-up from energetic patterns which are themselves step-ups from thought patterns generated by the Universal Unit of Consciousness. Therefore, it should come as no surprise to find metaphorical harmony between material and “spiritual,” or immaterial, law.

In review, the Simple Explanation's definition of karma is this: Karma is the mechanism through which the consequences of behavior inform future potential. Karma is a force of influence that arises out of the decision-making history of every unit of consciousness in the universe. Each UC generates its own karma. We are all affected by one another’s karma. The more a unit of consciousness has in common with another UC, the more it is affected by the other’s karma. Our aggregate karma affects all of creation.

To this definition we can now add the dynamics of quantum entanglement: Your actions affect not only you, they affect me to the extent we are "entangled." And, because of entanglement swapping, not only am I affected by you, but so is everyone else who is entangled with me, and everyone else entangled with them. And so on, and so on, and so on. And we are affected not only by actions, but also by each other's memes, which cycle into and throughout our shared transpersonal consciousness. (We’ll cover memes in Chapter 3.)

This entanglement principle may be the reason why all separation and estrangment is so difficult--"what God has joined together let no man put asunder." The reason is that we cannot truly separate what was once joined; when we do, supersymmetry with the other continues, whether we are aware of it or not.

Here’s another implication of the entanglement principle--as we are all fractal replications of the Universal UC; we are all in a supersymmetric relationship with the Origin—the Universal UC. This is why all UCs not only affect one another to the extent they share entanglements, they all feel the direct pull of Consciousness. The continual cycling of information from the Universal UC affects us all, all of the time. This is "information" in its truest sense—laying webs of consciousness throughout creation through principles of karmic entanglement and supersymmetry.

This is how it is that Lao Tzu could say in Verse 21 of the Tao Te Ching, “The life force within is self-evident. Thus, life itself provides trustworthy evidence of the originating source. From the first moment until now, the manifestations of consciousness remain ever the same. Thus do we all bear witness to the Creator, the Originator. This is accordingly how I know the ways of every thing and the origin of all things: by observing what is within me.”