What is reality? Each of us lives within our own mind, our experience in this world is a mental one. Information about the world, including other people in it, comes into our minds through our senses. Yet we feel a connection with others that we are experiencing a shared reality.
What is the basis of our shared reality? Is it the material world? Is our consciousness merely an epiphenomenon of the complexity of our brains? Or is it the other way around?
I have a theory that I would like to propose and expound upon through this blog:
Reality is Life observing and co-creating the Universe through Mind
Here are the definitions of the terms in the theory:
Life
Life can also be called Consciousness, Spirit, Life-force. Life is that which knows itself, is aware of the Universe, and can make choices through the use of Mind. We are living things on a planet filled with other living things and all living things have Life. Life is the animating principle within every life form.
We don’t know exactly how Life on Earth originated, but we know that living organisms only come from other living things. You are related, however distantly, to every other living person. On the tree of life, every organism is related to every other, all the way back to Luca, the Last Universal Common Ancestor. During Earth’s history, there have been several extinction events, wiping out as much as ninety-eight percent of all species, but Life has always survived because it is a force that will not be extinguished.
Life is infinite creative energy that expresses through every living individual.
Life is connected, each individual originating from a parent in an unbroken chain going back four billion years of earth’s history. But beyond that, I believe that life remains connected even though it appears to our consciousness that we are each separate and isolated. Life is itself a thing, an immaterial thing, but real nonetheless. I believe that the life within every individual is of one essence. One Life in the Universe that expresses itself through you and me and countless other living things within the biosphere of this planet and probably countless other planets among the trillions of stars that make up the material manifestation of the Universe. Every organism, from microbes to Man, exhibits awareness and some level of intelligence because it is part of the One Life and connected to infinite Mind.
Mind
Mind is information, math, and law. Mind can be likened to an infinite computer with infinite memory, infinite processing power, able to execute an infinite number of threads. Our human computers are limited material models of Mind. But Mind itself is not material. It has no limits. Where does the number seven exist? We can have seven physical objects, but the concept of seven exists beyond the physical. And no matter how many times you use the number seven, you will never run out.
Mind is what makes our shared reality real. Universal Mind holds the information about every particle throughout the entire universe. Every aspect of the material universe can be reduced to information. Every physical object exists at a set of coordinates in space-time. The molecules themselves are just numbers, hydrogen one, carbon six, oxygen eight, and so forth. Every photon has a frequency which is a number.
Each individual living thing has its own partition of mind which you can call the soul or ego. The individual mind observes a portion of the space-time Universe through sensory input, holds memories, and generates thoughts. Each individual has a two-sided view of Mind; they have their inner mind where they are apparently alone with their thoughts and the rest of the Universe outside of their minds. However, if Mind Itself is one universal thing then our separation is an illusion.
One function of Mind is to insure consistency throughout the Universe. Every living observer thinks into the same infinite Mind. Mind keeps track of the state of every particle that has been observed and then insures that it behaves consistently with the observed physical laws throughout time.
Universe
The material universe is the record of Life’s observations. It is the stage on which Life and Mind interact to script this play called Reality.
The Universe is formless until Life observes it through consciousness. We see this in quantum physics, as particles exist simultaneously in every place they could exist, as defined by a mathematical probability function until they are measured by a conscious observer, which causes the probability function to collapse and the particle to have a definite position in space and time. The position is a set of values, coordinates x, y, and z at time t. The mathematical probability function is an intellectual idea from the realm of Mind. The measurement is a choice. A conscious entity, such as a scientist, chooses to measure the particle, and the formless probability cloud forms into a real particle at the moment of measurement.
If we use the analogy that Mind is an infinite computer and Life is the computer user, then the Universe is the computer printout. However, today, with our digital computers that model Mind, we no longer make printouts. The computer output exists only as a momentary flicker of light from a computer screen or a puff of air coming out of a speaker. But that is how our reality is. The only time that exists to our consciousness is the present moment. The past is gone the future does not yet exist.
The persistence of the Universe is maintained by Mind. It insures everything that happens is consistent with the already-observed state of matter and the observed laws that govern its behavior by every observer throughout time. If you are walking through the desert and you observe a large rock in a certain place, then every other person that walks by that spot will observe the same rock. If you come back a year later, you will see the same rock, unless something has moved it. And it can only be moved in accordance with the observed laws that govern the behavior of rocks, like gravity, force, and work. Something would have to exert energy (a number measured in Joules) to move it to a new set of space-time coordinates. It’s all just numbers and math.
The Universe has the form it does because Mind insures consistency. We are observing the Universe through bodies made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and other trace elements, on a rocky planet with ninety-two naturally occurring elements, orbiting a star that produces energy through hydrogen fusion, in a galaxy of one hundred billion stars and and an observed universe of trillions of galaxies. In order for that to be true, then there must be a chain of events that led to this point. Along the way the observations of every living thing must be consistent with that chain of events throughout the entire life of the Universe, all the way back to the Big Bang when there were no observers. And since Mind is an infinite computer, it can calculate a consistent reality from the viewpoint of every observer.
Co-Creators of the Universe
The Universe takes form when it is observed by Life. But who decides what form it takes? Life decides. We decide. The collective consciousness of everything that has ever lived across the entire Universe has created it. Mind did not create it. Mind is a computer and computers have no opinion, they only execute instructions on data at the command of their users. For the Universal Mind, the user is Life Itself. It is you and me and every living thing on this planet and perhaps billions of other life-supporting planets across a trillion galaxies.
Mind calculates a consistent and persistent Universe, but it doesn’t care what that Universe looks like. Only Life can choose. And we have chosen the Universe in which we live. It is a Goldilocks universe that is just right for Life. And it is that way because we choose to live.
Einstein’s opinion of quantum physics was “God does not play dice with the universe.” He believed in the idea of God as the universal designer/creator/overseer. Many scientists today are atheistic materialists that assert the universe is all dice; the formation of the universe was a completely random event that created a universe with no meaning and no purpose. This is in opposition to the classic religious view of an anthropomorphic god-emperor that orchestrates all events in the universe to test humans.
But there is another possibility. God does play dice with the Universe, but it is loaded dice and we are the throwers. Here’s what I mean: When an individual observes a part of the Universe they have an expectation of what they will find and a desire for what they want to happen. Mind being an infinite computer following the commands of the user, the living entity, will try to give it exactly what it wants, but like every computer, Mind must follow its programming and it has been programmed by every living entity throughout space and time.
What does mind do when there is a conflict, when individuals want different outcomes? It rolls dice. It uses a random function, like the quantum probability function to select an outcome. So we have a Universe that is what we choose but is consistent for all because it follows established laws.
We each have our own individual partition of Mind that we program and we influence the programming of Universal Mind. Our individual program is always running, generating thoughts from the subconscious which we then reprogram by choosing what we want to focus on. Because all Mind is connected then the thoughts we focus on program our experience of reality, but we don’t realize it because we have an illusion of separation.
Follow this Blog to Explore this Theory Further
I will be adding regular posts to explore all the details and aspects of this view of the Universe.