Consciousness creates the idea of time, then measures the duration as well. We should understand that the realization of our world is both a mental conception and a physical reality. The world around us has myriads of viewpoints that change as our consciousness moves through the now. The person I call myself is but a collection of memories, hereditary information, experiences, learning, emotions, and patterns of thinking. We are here in the now because this is the only place for us to be. We cannot be in the past or the future except in mental processes. The physicality of our existence changes as the mental universe changes. Being in the now is a conscious mental state.
This is quite a confusing concept for some. Many corollary dilemmas spring from accepting the mental and physical universe as two aspects of the same universal state. An entire stand-alone universe outside of my person exists and contains all these things separate from me.
Knowledge and experience form our four-dimensional viewpoints. Modern viewpoints revolve around the physical aspects of the mind. These scientific interpretations often hold that the mind is roughly identical to the brain and is reducible to physical phenomena such as the firing of neurons and the chemical encodings of memory. Yet, we did not always think in this manner.
Throughout the age of human reasoning, the mind has been connected to the psyche. The term “soul” is often used synonymously with the psyche—which includes the totality of the human mind, both the conscious and unconscious elements. The soul has long been thought to be the immortal aspect of the human condition, a ghostly spirit where the personality and moral compass resides.
Carl Jung used the words ‘soul’ and ‘psyche’ as they are the same word in the German language. Of this he wrote: “I have been compelled, in my investigations into the structure of the unconscious, to make a conceptual distinction between soul and psyche. By psyche, I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious. By soul, on the other hand, I understand a clearly demarcated functional complex that can best be described as a “personality”. (Jung, 1971: Def. 48 par. 797).
In a universe paired with a mental aspect and a physical aspect, the dimensional realities in each pair would be different. The first dimension of the one point would be the same in both, but the second dimension of two points forming a line would be different. It is through this difference that they come to be independent entities. If one point is infinite and the other is temporal, then the world line of the second dimension would be a straight line to infinity in the mental state while the world line of the other would curve and eventually return to its own starting point, creating an orbit—a geometric figure. It would be temporal and physical because it had a beginning and an ending.
Infinity is not one thing. Even infinity must be paired with its opposite, the finite. Infinity simply has no beginning nor end. There can be many infinities in a larger infinity because small infinities, like endless numbers, take up no space at all and are not in time.
Objects exist beyond my personal awareness—such as the place I dwell, the people I know, and the universe I inhabit. They too have being in the now. They are a product of consciousness, but they cannot be of my consciousness alone. They are in the consciousness of all. We all have a similar basic vision of the world about us. A common sharing of conscious knowledge between existing entities and objects obviously occurs, though much of nature works through an unconscious mental process. Our conceptions reside in the mental state and deal directly with the infinite process of energy transformation and electrical connections. This mental state has to be of universal proportion—just as the physical state is of universal proportion.
Is this mental state of the universe God? If so, it surely is not an Abrahamic God that rules the universe. Is the physical state of the universe more valuable to us than the mental state, or are they equal? If they are both equal, are they the same?
Unconscious thought needs no brain to advertise its presence.
Thought brings to light a spark, impulsive waves that create space
and burns their way through time to start the clock of matter.
Living movements are preceded by thought.
All life thinks, as life is thought made manifest in form.
All of nature thinks, as all of nature is ruled by physical laws.
We see it in the movement of the wind,
We see it in the birthing of desire,
We see it in the crackling of a fire.
Even the cosmos is a living, breathing being
that looks endlessly to propagate and create
and sifts through infinity itself to find its better half.
Our self-centered, self-reflecting species has come to believe that we are the only thing that thinks. Despite the fact that plants seek the sun and tendrils wind their way up and down, despite the fact that insects show intelligence and microbes show awareness, our limited definition of thought has hidden the truth of the world from us. We have equated our brains with our intelligence and our nervous system with our thoughts. It has not occurred to us that thought precedes essence, that the spark of thought ignited the entire big bang that we theorized made the universe itself.
All movement is preceded by thought. It is thought that causes movement. Without movement, we can have no space nor time, or existence. We can experience the truth of this statement within our own selves. In order to do something, we must first contemplate and think about it–even if the thought is unconscious thought.
What is thought? We must define the words to be clear:
The word thought comes from Old English þoht, or geþoht, from the stem of þencan “to conceive of in the mind, consider.” [Harper, Douglas. “Etymology of Though.” Online Etymology Dictionary.]
Noesis (n.)
1820, from Greek noesis “intelligence, thought,” from noein “to have mental perception,” from noos “mind, thought.”
Mind (n.)
late 12c., from Old English gemynd “memory, remembrance, state of being remembered; thought, purpose; conscious mind, intellect, intention,” Proto-Germanic ga-mundiz (cognates: Gothic muns “thought,” munan “to think;” Old Norse minni “mind;” German Minne (archaic) “love,” originally “memory, loving memory”), from PIE root *men- (1) “think, remember, have one’s mind aroused,” with derivatives referring to qualities of mind or states of thought (cognates: Sanskrit matih “thought,” munih “sage, seer;” Greek memona “I yearn,” mania “madness,” mantis “one who divines, prophet, seer;” Latin mens “mind, understanding, reason,” memini “I remember,” mentio “remembrance;” Lithuanian mintis “thought, idea,” Old Church Slavonic mineti “to believe, think,” Russian pamjat “memory”). The meaning of “mental faculty” is mid-14c. “Memory,” one of the oldest senses, now is almost obsolete except in old expressions such as bear in mind, call to mind. Mind’s eye “remembrance” is early 15c. Phrase time out of mind is attested from early 15c. To pay no mind “disregard” is recorded from 1916, American English dialect. To have half a mind to “to have one’s mind half made up to (do something)” is recorded from 1726. Mind-reading is from 1882.
Thought has been linked with the mind since the beginning of language and human communications. Consciousness is also related to the mind, as consciousness is the state of being aware of one’s own existence.
Our physicists envision a singular spot of infinitely dense particles with indescribable temperatures where all particles once congregated in unfathomable density before exploding in the big bang.
Have we failed to comprehend that it was the spark of thought that preceded the observed reality of existence and started the interconnected chains of experience that became our universe?
Experience
[ik-speer-ee-uh ns]
noun
1. a particular instance of personally encountering or undergoing something:
2. the process or fact of personally observing, encountering, or undergoing something:
3. the observing, encountering, or undergoing of things generally as they occur in the course of time:
4. knowledge or practical wisdom gained from what one has observed, encountered, or undergone:
5. Philosophy. The totality of the cognitions given by perception; all that is perceived, understood, and remembered.
Prehension
[The term “prehension” indicates that the perceiver actually incorporates aspects of the perceived thing into itself. The term is meant to indicate a kind of perception that can be conscious or unconscious, applying to people as well as electrons.]
The march of time and space begins with prehensions of attraction and repulsion as elemental waves and particles recognize themselves and react. The reality of our world is not made of fundamental bits of matter that exist independently of one another as many believe. Reality is composed of the intermingled and entangled chains of events that make up experience.
These prehensions are felt in the most elemental of particles and waves. Particles and waves are the palpable recorded experience of thought in different states of energy and organization.
Awareness: the basis of existence
noun: awareness; plural noun: awarenesses
knowledge or perception of a situation or fact.
Awareness precedes perceptions or perceptions would not exist.
In order to have prehensions and conceptions, we must have an awareness that can recognize these senses. We prove this in our own existence. If we did not have both a conscious and an unconscious mind, we would know nothing and be nothing.
per·cep·tion
pərˈsepSH(ə)n/
noun: perception; plural noun: perceptions
the ability to see, hear or become aware of something through the senses.
It is that original awareness, the primal state, that creates the process of consciousness. If it were not present, there would be no registry or history of existence at all. The process of consciousness is the history of existence. We continually concoct existence out of nothing in every frame of time that we create.
Awareness is the precursor of consciousness. Consciousness is not a thing, but a process of self-objectification that constantly creates the world anew each moment. Through thought, awareness becomes conscious and organizes matter into being.
noun: consciousness
The state of being awake and aware of one’s surroundings. The awareness or perception of something by a person.
plural noun: consciousnesses: The fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.
Feel·ing
noun
noun: feeling; plural noun: feelings
the capacity to experience the sense of touch. The sensation of touching or being touched by a particular thing.
Per·cep·tion
noun: perception; plural noun: perceptions
the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.
Perceptions are feelings that have come to consciousness and made self-aware.
The most elementary of things experience the sense of touch. If it did not, it would not react to or be influenced by another object. Without a rudimentary sense of self, an object would never know or be influenced by another. This sense need not be intellectual, but as simple as gravitational attraction and repulsion.
All remembrance is of the mind.
Perceptions are coded into matter with chemical compounds made from elemental particles and waves, then stored, and organized into related conceptions by thought. This is the process of experience.
Thought is the eternal spark that interprets the electrical pulses and links chemical changes.
Actions are organized thoughts made manifest, as thought becomes material by recording temporal changes upon material particles and chemicals. It constantly changes the universe within us and around us.
It is all a part of an eternal process where fundamental awareness creates and projects experience so that the world as we know it might exist and continue in this existential experience.
Existence is a process, not a goal nor an end. The external world is composed of sound and light, mediums that are in essence vibratory. The elements themselves are not solid but composed of matter whose ultimate material nature is also vibratory.
Perhaps in its purest state, virgin awareness is void of experience and thought. That is easy to picture if we try to remember the time before we were born. It is void of space and time and particles and waves. Thought is the spark that creates all matter and all space and all time. All existence began as realized thoughts as the one reflected upon the other and objects were born.
Thought created the history of existence. Realized thoughts actually change the substance of matter. Matter itself is the record of thought having passed through points in space and time and imprinted the record of its passage on particles and elements, creating temporal events that become recorded experiences.
Albert Einstein did not believe in an Abrahamic God but assented to the laws of nature in the way Spinoza had done centuries before. He believed that order, not chaos, was the rule of the universe.
He once said that he did not believe that God played dice with the universe.
“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.” – Albert Einstein
Einstein also said: “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty…We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”
My friend Tim believes that the universe is infinite. If you could travel in a straight line forever, you would see nothing but stars and dust with galaxies, clusters, and planets so far beyond our sense’s ability to perceive that we could never find an end. It keeps on going forever. Even if matter is not present, Tim believes that space goes on forever. That is his picture of an infinite universe.
The problem with this image is that it is impossible to know. If energy cannot be newly created or destroyed (according to the 1st Law of Thermodynamics), then energy simply changes form. There would not be enough room in eternity to have infinite matter unless the universe is also infinite. Objects like the universe have a place in space and time. Therefore, both space and the universe must be finite. When the universe expands, everything is bigger and farther apart. In an eternity, the whole of finite matter that composes all objects would be so large as to be totally separated from one another.
So what is the universe expanding into?
That which is beyond the boundary of the universe is often called “voidness”. It is not anything. It is not in time and space. Voidness can be infinite because there is nothing there at all. You cannot travel there because it is not there. You cannot see it because it is invisible. Voidness is not simply the stillness of quantum fields without movement. Voidness is the infinity of nothingness, the original state of non-existence.
But is there something that can be eternally held in the nothingness of the void? Can the void hold potentiality? Potentiality is not something real––not something that exists. It has no definite time and occupies no space. In this case, potentiality is the invisible seed of something that can possibly exist.
If the void is capable of holding potentiality (as I assume must be the case), then it must have the ability to store both the potentiality of energy and the potentiality of alertness and awareness. Both are essential components of world formation. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines potential as “existing in possibility, capable of development into actuality.” See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/potential.
Potentiality is not actuality. It need not be in time and space. It can, like the void, be infinite. From the beginning, in order to start the unveiling of a universe, potential energy must exist within the void. This potentiality of the void would take up no time nor occupy any space because neither space nor time exists in the non-dimensional. Further, if the void can hold potential energy, then it can hold potential awareness and the potential intellect of the natural mind. The void’s potential information can serve as a two-dimensional blueprint for the unveiling of a universe.
We must then suspect that awareness and energy have their origin in the void. They do not exist there, but the potential to exist must be harbored in the void.
There are three fundamental necessities for the universe to exist––energy, awareness, and information. All are invisible and all are infinite––without form or body.
With these three fundamentals, the void has the ability to bring the universe into existence. In modern terms, an excitation of a cosmic thought in the potential eternal energy of the void creates the zero-dimension, a dimension similar to the void––in that it is outside space and time––but unlike the void in that the newly-released energy becomes kinetic instead of potential and is perceived by the potential for awareness in the void. Movement, like the released energy that creates a thought, creates a zero-dimension that is infinite and unique in that it sprang from the void by actuating the void’s potentiality.
Is it any wonder then, that this voidness would be interpreted as God by our ancestors, both remote and recent? The void has the property of holding the potential to activate nature itself with the potential energy and awareness that is somehow stored within it.
Tim’s wife also believes in an expanding universe that grows faster and faster as objects speed away from one another. If you ask her what the universe is expanding into, the answer is that “the universe is all there is. Nothing exists without it. It keeps getting bigger. It is not expanding into anything because there is nothing in which to expand.”
That is precisely my point… at the remote end of the universe is the void, just as in the remote beginning.
The good thing about the void is that it can be anything you want it to be. It can be God, Buddha, Allah, Jupiter, or Ra the Sun God. It can be the Tao, the heavens, Nirvana, or altered consciousness.
What is created can be nature, reality, illusion, Maya, or something in between. It can be nothing and everything at once. Nothing really exists but the void and the realized potential it has wrought.
The question was asked, “Did man invent mathematics or did he discover it?” We assume that mathematics springs from a universal source because the universe exhibits mathematical precision and patterns from the very start.
Before we can have a world, we need events. To have events we need an observer. To have an observation we need awareness of an object or an event. The essential quality for observation or interaction is to have awareness of an object. Observers are generally thought of as being people, but they can also be a system. An observer is a person or a system that observes.
Awareness, then, is the first cause. It is responsible for the recognition of an object and events. Objects and events exist in time and space. Awareness comes in myriads of forms and degrees. It is present in all living things. It is present as prehensions and in inanimate things. All things are produced by awareness in myriads of localized forms. When organized, awareness becomes consciousness. All things are formed from the eternal and non-material awareness which has always been present––as the eternal now is ever-present. This is where the concept of the world in the mind is most convincing. In order for there to have been an evolutionary path through the birthing of elements in stars, there had to be an observer.
As the positive numbers in the mathematical universe continue endlessly, the negative numbers continue endlessly as well. The sum of all these numbers negative and positive are zero, that is, the total mathematical value of the mathematical universe is zero. It has no numerical value, as it is not a thing and needs no value. For example, the sum of 1+2+3+4 subtracted from the sum of -1-2-3-4 equals zero. It has no value because it comes from its source in the non-dimensional. All the mathematical universes must add up to zero as well. In order for that to occur physically—to add up to zero—negative values must be paired with positive values.
When change occurs in the dimensional universe, that change is recorded physically by changes in the physical matter of the universe. [Rock hits a rock, and forms a crater. Cut your toe, feel the pain, see the injury.] My take is that the non-dimensional is both opposed to and complementary to the physical universe. It is the realm of thought, mathematics, and ideas. Data from the physical world is simultaneously coded and stored as data in the non-dimensional realm.
Matter behaves like both a particle and a wave. Matter is the temporal recording media of physical change. Events are coded physically and stored to form our mental experience. The non-dimensional process of thought and awareness constantly creates our consciousness in the present moment. This is how the non-dimensional interacts with the dimensional. It has done so throughout the process of evolution. Non-dimensional activity is present in instincts and the workings of the unconscious mind. This activity is unfurled into finite chemical and electrical activities that evolve further and, in turn, record their changes back into the non-dimensional.
The dimensional universe creates a boundary that limits infinity to localized viewpoints.
My take is that In the non-dimensional realm, records of events are coded into wave frequencies that hold mathematical descriptions of their counterparts in the dimensional universe. The equations and formulas in the non-dimensional realm come to being in the physical world and guide the unfolding of the physical universe. Our physical changes may be coded in mathematical forms and also simultaneously recorded in the non-dimensional realm from which the physical universe is projected.
About 1,500 galaxies are visible in this deep view of the universe, taken by allowing the Hubble Space Telescope to stare at the same tiny patch of sky for 10 consecutive days in 1995. The image covers an area of sky only about the width of a dime viewed from 75 feet away.
“Who knows what is in the mind of God?”
People will tell us that “God knows all.
”The common conception of God is that of a divine being
that creates and governs the universe.
If God knows what everyone is thinking,
knows where everyone has been,
and knows what they all will be,
what a huge amount of information that would be.
We also must realize that the Earth
is a small speck of dust in a commonplace galaxy.
There are trillions of stars and billions of galaxies.
Try to imagine a mind that knows all this.What would it be like?
One thing is certain. It would not be like the human mind.
It would be more like universal consciousness.
But would God even have a self?
Is God self-aware?
What need would God have for self-awareness?
Self-awareness is a curse and a blessing.
It creates loneliness.
It creates unhappiness.
If God were self-aware, God would be lonely.
Does God get lonely?
The self can only be aware of its self by knowing
that something from the outside is not the self.
If God is everything, then what would exist outside God
for God to be self-aware?
If God isn’t everything then what is this thing outside
that is not God?
God does not need a brain.
If God is everything, then God is a brain.
An observer does not need to be self-aware.
A mouse observes the cheese with no sense of self.
The world existed before self-awareness.
So, as far as we can tell (and surely we know little),
the universe has only had self-awareness
for a minute fraction of an eternal epoch.
The universe has gotten along quite well
for billions of years without self-awareness.
Do we live in a fraction of an eon when the mud
stands up and sees that there are others?
Does that matter at all to the mind of God
that has no self and no need for a self?
After all, if God were present before anything existed,
then God will be present when everything has passed away.
Dimensions are mental constructs. A dimension is a measurement of something. These measurements are in the mental world of conscious awareness. We can only measure things with our conscious intellect. When we become aware of a dimension, it is a viewpoint.
This parade of dimensions begins with the zero-dimension, a non-dimensional viewpoint without material content. For dimensions to come into view, both awareness and information processing is required. That is why the zero-dimension is a mental world of awareness. It precedes the existence of being. This non-material zero-dimension is without time, without space and is eternally present everywhere at once. The zero dimension is the source of the awareness that projects the universe into being.
This is where each of us came from before birth and possibly the same non-place that we dwell in when we die. We all remember this place. Since we have all experienced the place where our awareness of ourselves was united with everything before we began to exist in this time and space. Everyone has experienced an infinity of endlessness.
Timelessness can be pictured as a sleeping form of awareness that—when awakened—develops into the recognition of sensory touches and perceptions. In time, awareness births the subconsciousness and the self-consciousness.
As the universe is born from infinity, we are as well. Infinity is that which was before this life experience. The world about us is similar to a continuous dream that is made real by our consciousness awareness.
Because the zero dimension is static and unchanging, the first and second dimensional structures are also timeless in that they are everywhere at once.
To see something in three dimensions, one has to view from outside and above the apparent dimensions. A circle on a plane—like a drawing on paper—does not appear as a sphere until viewed from above the plane. The added dimensions of height, width, length, and duration create a space that becomes visible in three dimensions while height, width, and length are being experienced.
Duration is not only an element of time but it is also an element of length. “Length” commonly refers to physical size, as in the length, the width, and depth of an object. Duration measures the time period, but the term length is also used to define a period of time as in: “How long have you been waiting?”
When and space and time are molded into a common dimension, they become that fourth-dimensional viewpoint which Einstein called spacetime.
Something has to come into being within a dimension before it can exist. Otherwise, it would still be in the realm of dimensionless infinity.
At the very beginning of an idea, the universe has a point. This point has a purpose. It becomes the first-dimension. The point exists everywhere at once because that is all there is. The entire universe resides in it. The point exists even now in every corner of the universe. It is the eternal first-dimension. It is the foundation of experience from a timeless realm without a location. Space itself is unborn and appears in the second dimension. The point has the ability to be omnipresent by the simple fact that it is the only thing that exists.
Yet, our shared awareness cannot recognize or react to one thing alone because there is nothing to reference. At the very least, a singularity is unstable if not impossible.
A second-dimension only comes into being with the existence of at least two points—but the essential ingredient of awareness must present for observing, interpreting, and recording this information. This fact becomes even more obvious in the three-dimensional view where awareness is essential to separate the flat two-dimensional image of a circle from its background to envision a sphere with height, length, and width. In order to see a sphere, we have to see it from above and outside the image. It takes conscious awareness to do this. The second dimension requires dimensional awareness to exist. It exists upon a timeless plane with the entire universe and all its structure written in every part of space and every qubit of information by the first-dimensional point.
We have been taught to understand awareness as a product of evolutionary biology. Many think awareness is something that occurred from a chemical soup after molecules began to replicate and divide. Our ideas of awareness and consciousness are built around the idea of living beings, especially those with nervous systems. Some do not believe that plants have awareness, though they react to sunlight and propagate themselves. It takes subconscious mental powers to grow DNA into something that can be passed to offspring—and this does not necessarily mean the world is formed from intelligent design from a divine creator. Most awareness is subconscious. It is not necessarily produced from a self-reflective mind unless we consider the mid of nature itself is self-aware. Awareness comes before the mind.
Let us picture a mental universe that coexists with the physical universe. The physical universe is not a solid block of physical mass any more than the mental universe is a unified universal mind. Neither is true. The physical universe is composed of entities unique to themselves, just as the mental universe is made from separate levels of individual awareness each unique to themselves. Awareness is that which holds the knowledge of interactions and observations. As such, awareness precedes existence itself.
Yes, awareness comes first. For eons, this awareness may have held nothing at all because there was nothing of which to be aware. Each of us experiences the truth of this first hand. We come from a place that has no memories, no experience, and no existence until we are conceived, grow aware, and begin to form our identity. What we are before we are born is a field of awareness that has not come into identifiable form. Because awareness existed before we did, we were able to recognize, learn, and eventually become that which we are now. If our awareness did not exist before our birth, our birth would never have happened. So it is with all interactions and observations in nature and beyond. It takes awareness for anything to have physicality. That is why there are two states in existence, the mental and the physical. Both are separate aspects of the same reality.
To connect two points and form a line, information must pass between these points. Something or some non-thing must become aware of both points. Yet, this line is infinite because it has no length. We can see that there must be a form of knowing in the non-dimensional realm. It is not some void dimension that is without knowledge or thought of any kind. Left to itself, the vector of this line could go on forever or curve back upon itself to form an orbit. In the second dimension, there is no duration nor speed.
Because awareness is the one pre-existing condition essential for any form of energy to be perceived, awareness must be the original state of the universe. Awareness precedes essence. Awareness evolves into subconsciousness and consciousness.
A mental dimension for the positive point and a physical dimension for the negative point is part of the pairing of opposite states. These points are entangled. What happens to one happens to the other instantly because these points are still eternal and not in the dimension of time. Without time, no speed or duration exists. Each point, though duplicates of another, have different spins. Separate viewpoints evolve from that spin.
Awareness evolves into higher consciousness. This is confirmed by examination of the evolution of conscious life. This does not mean that awareness constantly knows everything in the universe, nor does it mean that there is a universal plan for advanced consciousness to inherit or evolve into a super-intelligence that is reserved for the attributes of a god. Self-awareness often rests. We sleep and we dream. We are not always consciously aware. We can conclude this is so by examining our awareness. Subconscious awareness is in charge of our autonomous systems that continue with or without self-awareness. The universe has evolved without self-consciousness for billions of years.
-Kenneth Harper Finton Thursday, August 1, 2019, revised 8/29/2020
Born squawking with a curious furrow in my brow, I had no choice in the matter of my birth. Later, I was to learn I had been born into a large country and into an even larger universe that I am still learning to comprehend.
When I was eight I had an abdominal operation and was placed under either. I still remember the vision I had under the influence of the drug. I was running from Father Time who chased me with thunderbolts shooting from his fingertips as he yelled, “Stop, stop! You are ahead of time. Stop!”
It was a powerful vision that is vivid to this day.
How strange this world is to the young:I was born to be myself and not someone else. This is odd enough but it was even odder to come to conception here in this time instead of somewhere else in another time. Everything was such a mystery. I truly wanted to solve the mystery. I felt this could well be my calling.
It did not take long to discover this fact: everyone is stuck in themselves, the same as I am. Everyone has their own little universe where they are the king or the queen.
Sometimes while I was in a playful mood, I asked myself, “If you could be somebody else, who would that be?”
When I ran through the history of people I have met or known, I could not choose to be any of them. There was no one I might want to be morethan myself, male or female. It’s inconceivable I could be someone other than myself unless I was play-acting the part. Since I have to be me, I might as well make the most of the situation, I decided.
I took a while to understand why I arrived to be a player in this era. I surmised that it had to do with time and consciousness, something science cannot yet explain. It is so easy to miss this vital connection: the now is ever present, just as awareness is always present.
Is this a mere coincidence? Is the now not a measure of time?
The now is not measurable at all, but a micro fraction of an instant where the past changes into the future. The only thing solely contained in the now is our awareness. Consciousness remembers the past and imagines the future, but always does so in the now.
I came to this realization at a young age and caused myself great confusion. Did this mean the world is a mental construction?
For a while, I considered the possibility that the universe is actually a vision which comes alive in the intellect. This was a problematic idea. The mind itself is a mystery. How could the mind be only a product of flesh and blood, neural connections, when nature obviously had a mind which did not need a nervous system?
We are the centers of our worlds, yet nature has carried out its miracles for billions of years without the help of human consciousness through an unconscious process of evolutionary experiments. This has likely been the case since time began.
The colors we see are wavelengths of light. The mind learns to recognize these as different colors. About me, the people I knew had their own personal mindsets. They were different and separate from my own thoughts, though they used much of the same information I used to make their own world view. The primary difference between us is the type and quantity of the information we process both in the mind and the body.
Throughout our lives, the now remains stationary. It is not time that moves, but consciousness. Awareness is always being transformed through experiences, interactions, and observations. If time were to move, what would be the speed of time? If time flowed, what would be the volume of the flow?
No fixed universal clock can measure the flow or speed of time. Time is relative to dimensions, not to a fixed standard. With no way to measure the speed of time, no method can be devised to measure the speed of the now. The now has no speed at all, nor can it move.The rational thing to conclude is that time does not flow and the now does not move. Instead, consciousness changes.
Exploration on the Dimensional Universe & Non-dimensional Realm
ABSTRACT
Assuming that negative dimensions are as real as positive dimensions, the non-dimensional would serve as the realm in which the positive dimensions are balanced by the negative dimensions. Both are parts of the whole universe and not two separate universes. They are commingled and entangled, while the non-dimensional knows no boundary and is infinite.
Keywords: Universe, positive dimension, negative dimension, non-dimensional, God.
“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty…We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” – Albert Einstein
The Concept of a Universal God
When contemplating infinity and the universe, there is no way to escape the concept of God. That which existed before anything and after anything, even though it be nothing at all, is still another concept of God. Nothing is not a thing. Traditionally, for most advanced religious dogmas, God is not a thing as well. An empty void has no existence without a universe in which to place it. Even a spirit in a world outside of time and space would need a materialized world for any material form of reality to exist. God and the world not only co-exist, but they ARE one another. How?
Both atheists and theists are correct. God does not exist because God is not a thing in space and time. Existence occurs within space and time. The theist is correct in so far that the dimensionless place that precedes the universe—what they call God—must be infinite and the finite exists within it.
But what is the infinite? Who can possibly comprehend that which is not there—not within the plane of existence that begins with a two-dimensional universe? The one-dimensional point, being a singularity, is also infinite, being everywhere at once. Modern physicists envision a singular point of infinitely dense particles with indescribable temperatures as the beginning of the universe. It was a place where all particles at once congregated in an unfathomable density before exploding in the Big Bang. What caused these particles to come together is unknown. What packed them so closely is unknown. The singularity, they say, was a micro-momentary event that was unstable and had to expand explosively with the Big Bang.
Where did the Big Bang happen? It happened everywhere because it was and is the entire universe. Having no medium over which to travel, the newly-birthed universe had to carve space, time, and motion as it expanded, moving at incredible speeds. It is said that the result of this constant expansion—that still exists to this day—will reach likely reach a point of no return where all movement will cease to exist universally. Whether the bang really occurred in this manner is beyond the scope of this inquiry. I am addressing the unthinkable realm of the non-dimensional.
As the positive numbers in the visible world continue endlessly, the negative numbers continue endlessly as well. The sum of all these numbers negative and positive, adds up to zero. That it the total mathematical value of the universe—zero. It has no numerical value, as it is not a thing and needs no value. [Example: the sum of 1+2+3+4 subtracted from the sum of -1-2-3-4 equals zero.] It has no value because it comes from its source in zero dimension. All the universe must add up to zero as well. In order for that to occur physically—to add up to zero—negative values must be paired with positive values.
I think it is logical to suspect that beyond our visible dimensions there is a corresponding system of non-dimensions. Negative dimensions balance the visible dimensions. [Negative dimensions do not suggest a darker value, but a negative mathematical solution to the balancing of the universe.] Everything in the living universe and most primary atomic particles have both positive and negative aspects. Dimensions are measurements from observation points. We can perform both negative and positive measurements. Non-dimensional attributes of existence could also include that which has not yet existed or that which has already existed but has been torn away or removed from dimensional time and space.
The Non-Dimensional Aspect
Anegative dimension could be like the other side of a Möbius Strip. If, for example, the physical universe is formed like a Möbius Strip—and the current thinking of physicists accept that the universe is actually a two-dimensional plane—then a thin membrane of a spacial boundary with a simple twist could produce a situation wherethe observation point on one side of the boundary would be duplicated as an observation point on the other side of the boundary, yet neither point would be aware of the other because of the forward movement of time. In a Möbius Strip, the inside and outside are merged and co-mingled. Viewpoints from the outside see only the exterior, while those on the inside see only the interior.
Assuming that negative dimensions are as real as positive dimensions, the non-dimensional would serve as the realm in which the positive dimensions are balanced by the negative dimensions. Both are parts of the whole universe and not two separate universes—they are commingled and entangled, while the non-dimensional knows no boundary and is infinite. We can assume that there is only one infinity or assume that there are as many localized infinities as there are positive and negative numbers. Infinity takes up no space nor has duration. An infinite number of local infinities could fit in the one infinity as their numeric value is zero.
Infinity and Information Storage
When change occurs in the dimensional universe, that change is recorded physically by changes in the physical matter of the universe. The non-dimensional is both opposed and complementary to the physical universe. It is the realm of mathematics and ideas. Data from the physical world may be simultaneously coded and stored as data in the non-dimensional realm.
Matter behaves like both a particle and a wave. Matter is the temporal recording media of physical experience. In our physical dimension, events are coded chemically and stored to form our mental experience. The non-dimensional process of thought and electrical stimulus constantly creates our consciousness in the present moment. This is one example as to how the non-dimensional entangles with the dimensional. It has done so throughout the process of evolution. Non-dimensional data is present in instincts and the workings of the unconscious mind.This activity is unfurled into finite chemical and electrical activities that evolve further and, in turn, record their changes back into the non-dimensional.
It seems likely that in the non-dimensional realm, records of events are coded into wave frequencies that hold mathematical descriptions of their counterparts in the dimensional universe. The equations and formulasin the non-dimensional realm come to being in the physical world and guide the unfolding of the physical universe. Our physical changes may be coded in mathematical forms and also simultaneously recorded in the non-dimensional realm from which the physical universe is projected since the Big Bang. The dimensional universe created a boundary that limited the infinity to localized viewpoints.
Awareness and Essence
The other essential aspect of the non-dimensional is mental awareness. Even if this awareness had nothing of which to be aware for what we consider an era in time, it is still primal awareness. Awareness is a mental state. It is not only the in the physical world, but the non-dimensional world as well. Awareness must of necessity precede observation and interaction or no events would occur at all. Something needs to be aware of any interaction, and that awareness happens by necessity in the non-dimensional realm. It was there before any interactions took place in order to record and perceive them.
Our perception of the dimensional universe is limited and our lives have beginnings and endings. The question is: Are we preserved in the infinite non-dimensional realm?
Three-dimensional objects can be mapped out on a piece of two-dimensional paper and the paper can be folded to create that object in three dimensions. This is the case with origami techniques known for generations. The diagram of the object on the two-dimensional plane is folded again and again until it becomes a three-dimensional object. Nature constantly uses origami techniques to unfold—from the unfolding of a bird’s wings, an insect’s metamorphosis, and even the DNA of genetic codes. Because the final product is inherent in the coded structures—similar to the entire image being in every part of a hologram, the spider knows the geometry of its web, the cell knows the sequence of division. The universe itself is in the process of unfolding.
That which is physical and temporal in the dimensional universe is mathematical and infinite in the non-dimensional. I suspect that information is never lost, but—like matter and energy—changes forms and states. There would be no loss of important information if a duplicate eternal copy of all mathematical realities is encoded beyond time and space in a non-dimensional plane. It would be as though the universe has a backup copy.
We can surmise that awareness—through unconsciousness, consciousness, and thought turned into action—creates the world and all the experience held within that world. Awareness is within us—as well as outside us—because it is the foundation of being and the source of all things present, past and future.
We can describe the world as not only a work-in-progress, but a record of historical events and experiences where unconscious thoughts were made manifest and tangible by actions, recorded by the bricks and mortar of matter, and re-interpreted by the mind to formulate experience from contiguous and entangled events.
Primal awareness could be called God, but the danger in doing so is mixing up the mythology with the reality. This God is not the God-king or God-the-Father who in his divinity imposes his will and plans upon the world. This God is not a noun, but a verb. God is not a thing, but the process of creating and experiencing a completely free and random universe of conceptions and experiences of unlimited potentiality.
If it is correct to say that the world is awareness, then it is correct to say that awareness is the world. If it is correct to say that awareness is God, then it is correct to say that God is awareness. If it is correct to say that the world is God, then it is correct to say that God is the world. If it is correct to say that we are the world, then it is correct to say that the world is us. If it is correct to say God is in us, then it is correct to say that we are in God.
There is only ‘One-thing’ where there is only one dimension. This ‘One-thing’ is an infinite point—a singularity. It is everywhere at once because that is all that there is.
Beyond that point is zero dimension.
“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.” – Albert Einstein
Einstein also said: “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
Plato’s bust in the Louvre by an unknown artist in Paris in 1842
The Four Levels of Cognition in Plato (From a paper written
by Ken Finton in January 1967)
There has been much controversy in the interpretation of Plato’s allegory of the cave and the four systems or levels of cognition symbolized within this parable. This passage and the thoughts relating to it have done more than any other of Plato’s writings to establish him as working within a mystical understanding of the world process and have given rise to the transcendentalists and neo-platonists.
However, such controversy is only controversial to the non-mystical minds that find that they themselves are caught in one or more of the under levels of cognition to which Plato refers and have to bring the highest level down to their own level of understanding in order to comprehend the whole, thus lowering the entire scale of Plato’s thought.
The mystic will implicitly understand Plato’s implications and will interpret them according to the prevailing understanding of his own time.
Plato first established that the Sun can be understood and symbolized as the Good. One will notice that there is no corresponding state of mind for this understanding. “You will agree,” Plato said, “that the Sun not only makes the things we see visible but also brings them into existence and gives them growth and nourishment; yet, he is not the same thing as existence.” (Chapter 23, p. 220, The Republic)
What reaches us from the sun is but light itself in its varying and different forms? Elementary science shows us that the sun is responsible for all of the life energy processes on earth, directly and indirectly, from photosynthesis in plants to the completion of the life cycle in the animal kingdom. How then are we to understand that the Sun is, as Plato said, light, yet is not the same thing as existence?
A scientific understanding of this basic mystical intuition was not possible until Einstein made his tremendous discoveries about light and relativity. If we understand existence to be made of a material body and having a place in space and time, then we can understand how light itself hovers on the edge of existence, encompassing infinity, yet not being quite the same as existence itself because it has no place in space and time. A ray of light leaving the sun requires sixteen minutes to reach the earth from our observations; yet, would that ray of light have a conceptual mind it would have no consciousness that any time had elapsed but would think that it arrived at the moment it left. With Einstein the speed of light is absolute. [See, for example, a book on relativity such as, “The ABC of Relativity” by Bertrand Russell.]
No material body can ever be pushed with the speed of light for as the speed increases the mass increases proportionately and could the speed of light be reached the mass would then become infinite.
Light itself, one can see, hovers on the edge of mystical unity and the mystical mind by directly experiencing light has understood what Plato meant by establishing the sun as a divinity. The ancients were more prone to give worship and credit to the basic energies than a modern man who takes their being for granted. The very term enlightenment signifies that one has directly experienced and understood the sacred power and qualities of light.
Light itself is a common denominator of all religious and mystical experiences. Christ said, “I am the light of the world!” By identifying himself with the light he said that he was the firstborn, the first cause, the original creation, and all things came into existence through him. Literary and religious symbolism throughout the world plays with the obvious connotations of light against darkness. Notice also that painters in representing spiritual transcendence play with the subtleties of light in its infinite variety of expressions. Plato identified light with The Good and in his levels of cognition noesis or intelligence appeals only after the understanding of the Sun and The Good.
Noesis is a Greek word referring to the perception of the mind, what the nous does. Dianoia (Greek: διάνοια) is a term used by Plato for a type of thinking, specifically about mathematical and technical subjects. It is the capacity for the process of, or the result of discursive thinking, in contrast with the immediate apprehension that is characteristic of noesis.]
Noesis is not “thought” but that understanding which is higher than thought, spontaneous rational intuition, an immediate act of vision that can only be grasped by the enlightened mind and is not to be confused with reasoning from premise to conclusion. The unenlightened attempt at this form of knowledge is called rationalization, the sticky trap into which the majority of men fall. Rationalization is not so much in noesis as it is in the lowest state of cognition, eikasia, which we will refer to in a moment. The term eikasía (Ancient Greek: εἰκασία), meaning imagination in Greek, was used by Plato to refer to a human way of dealing with appearances. It is the inability to perceive whether a perception is an image of something else.
Below noesis, the spontaneous reaction to the vision of God is the level of dianoia or thinking. Dianoia is the conceptual mind within the subject-object relationship, aware of isolation, division, paradox, and seeming contradiction. This includes reasoning from premise to conclusion which always falls short of perfect knowledge and understanding.
Perfect knowledge cannot be communicated for to communicate is to bring it to another level of cognition. Dianoia or thinking recoils upon itself in a closed circle that can approximate truth but never envelope or join it. A thought is countered by its opposing value or negative interpretation. A synthesis is formed between the two which is countered by another negative thought, thesis, and antithesis, until one looks up and finds that one synthesis puts him right back at his starting point and finds that thought has only brought him back to his beginnings once again. However, by going through the revolving circles of thought one comes nearer to the closer truth. A quick example would be in the abstract: A is +A. This is countered by +A is -A. This is synthesized by +A is both +A and -A. We ask then if +A is -A why talk about A? This is synthesized by the thought that this is so because +A is also -A.
The Greek word dianoia shows implicitly in its roots what happens with thought and why it is lower than enlightened intuition. Di– is a root word meaning “two” and ‘anoia’ is from a root word meaning mind. Dianoia is the process of viewing dually, the process of treating one’s own mind as though it is separate and distinct from the Divine Mind recognized by the mystic, the mind which is existence itself in all its past, present, and future possibilities, infinite and eternal in nature.
In Greek mythology, Pistis (Πίστις) was the personification of good faith, trust, and reliability. She is mentioned together with such other personifications as Elpis (Hope), Sophrosyne (Prudence), and the Charites, who were all associated with honesty and harmony among people.
Below the state of dianoia is the state of pistis which is similar to noesis in that it obtains the correct intuition, but the reason for that intuition and the understanding of it is not known. This is the state that assigns reality and existence blindly without attempting to define by thought (dianoia) the basic natures and reasons for actions and existence. Pistis is translated as belief, and as such, belief is insecure, destines to vacillate between its positive and negative state (doubt and belief) until the state of dianoia falls before noesis and liberation and mind control are brought about.
Plato calls the lower form of cognition eikasia. The difference betweenimagining and belief is one of degree. The lines between all states and levels are freely drawn and the human mind is free to pass through any or all at any given moment. The states themselves should not be viewed as constant, but shifting as man revolves around the circumstance of his being.
Imagining is an unsatisfactory translation of the Greek word eikasia. The root word is connected with eikon, image or likeness, reminding one of the English word ‘icon’, which has associations of blind, unquestioning acceptance of images, a worshipful idolatry that reveres the thing as it appears instead of the thing-in-itself that can be sought and clarified on the higher levels of cognition.
The historical unfolding of religious ideas I think best illustrates Plato’s objective ideas of knowledge. In the state of eikasia man’s worship is turned toward images and idols, not knowing that they are merely images and idols. In the state of pistis or belief man gives birth to definitions and concepts of a God and his faith swings back and forth between doubt and belief because he has made his concept so anthropomorphic that as his belief in himself ebbs, his belief in the mercy of a God goes through corresponding changes.
In the state of dianoia or thinking, man becomes aware of his isolation and the unfeeling process of the universe and the world-ground. Finally, denuding himself of conceptions, expanding his mind through thought, then vomiting the thought and standing naked in the presence of himself, man reached a state of enlightenment in which there is no mind-activity, a unity with light, and descending from this state into awareness of the outside world ho no longer marks off the world into rigid and separate categories and he is aware that he flows within the world-mind and is capable of entering into the highest state of human cognition, that of direct intuitive reason.
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Kenneth Harper Finton 