God Sees Everything From Many Different Points of View
Is it possible to understand the true nature of God? Is it possible to understand the true nature of our own existence? The answer is yes, but this answer must be qualified in terms of whether that understanding is only at a conceptual level or whether that understanding arises from one’s own direct experience. The ultimate understanding can only arise when one directly experiences the true nature of one’s own existence, but even without that ultimate experience, it is still possible to understand the nature of that existence at a conceptual level, which is really all that’s possible in this kind of an essay. What’s novel about this essay is that this conceptual understanding will be explained in terms of scientific concepts of modern physics. Understanding the nature of one’s own existence at a conceptual level has been possible for a very long time, but only recently has it become possible to translate this understanding into scientific concepts of modern physics, which has the advantage of clearing up a lot of the confusion that swirls around this conceptual understanding. The scientific concepts clear up the confusion in a straightforward way.
The ancient understanding can be found in many sacred texts, such as the Vedas or the Tao. The ancient understanding that will be relied upon in this essay is that found in Advaita Vedanta, since this resonates most closely with the scientific understanding of modern physics. The first thing to be clear about is what we mean by God. Unlike the western concept of a personal God, in the east, the concept of God is impersonal. In Advaita Vedanta, the ultimate concept of God is called Brahman. To be clear, Brahman is not a person. The impersonal nature of Brahman is often conceptualized in terms of absolute nothingness or the void. The absolute irony of this concept is that absolute nothingness cannot really be conceptualized, and so we’re trying to talk about a concept of something that’s inherently non-conceptual. We’re trying to do something that is impossible. We’re trying to conceptualize something, the absolute nothingness of Brahman, that is inherently non-conceptual in nature. The basic problem is we can only conceptualize the nature of perceivable things that appear in the world. The absolute nothingness of Brahman is beyond the world that we perceive, and cannot be conceptualized. No wonder there is so much confusion when we try to talk about God, but this confusion goes much deeper than that. The confusion has to do with the true nature of what we really are, which at its source is Brahman.
This confusion about the non-conceptual nature of Brahman, which at essence is the true nature of what we really are, is the reason that in all nondual traditions, like Advaita Vedanta, Taoism and Zen Buddhism, no value is given to any possible conceptual explanation. Value is only given to the direct experience of Brahman, which is understood as the direct experience of the truth of what one really is. This direct experience of the true nature of what one is, is called awakening, spiritual enlightenment, or truth realization. Just like with awakening from a dream, when the dream disappears from existence and only the true nature of the dreamer remains, one realizes that one is not really a part of the dream, but rather the dreamer of the dream. In terms of the absolute nothingness of Brahman, when everything is the world one perceives disappears from existence and only the absolute nothingness of Brahman remains, one realizes that one still exists as that absolute nothingness even though one perceives nothing. Spiritual enlightenment or awakening is the realization of the truth of what one really is in the sense that one knows that one still exists as Brahman even though one perceives nothing. The problem with trying to talk about spiritual enlightenment or awakening is that absolute nothingness cannot be conceptualized.
In spite of this problem, we have to start somewhere, and the best place to start is with the concept of Brahman as absolute nothingness. Brahman is the ultimate impersonal nature of God, which can never really be conceptualized. When we say that God sees everything, we’re talking about the consciousness of God, as in perceiving things. This is where things get a bit tricky. At the ultimate level of absolute nothingness, which is the ultimate level of Brahman, nothing is perceived. The perception of things requires a presence of perceiving consciousness. In Advaita Vedanta, that presence of perceiving consciousness is called Atman. Atman is a presence of perceiving consciousness at the center of its own world, which perceives everything in that world. The tricky aspect of the explanation is in terms of how we get from the ultimate impersonal consciousness of Brahman, which perceives nothing, to the presence of perceiving consciousness of Atman at the center of its own world, which perceives everything in that world.
The way this is understood in Advaita Vedanta is Brahman is the Source of Atman. Brahman is called the Source, and Atman is called the Self. Atman is also called I Am or the witness. In spiritual terms, Brahman is the spiritual Source of Atman, while Atman is a spiritual presence of perceiving consciousness at the center of its own world that perceives everything in that world.
The key concept that allows for an understanding of this relation of Brahman to Atman is that the consciousness of Brahman is undivided and unlimited, while the consciousness of Atman is divided and limited. The perceiving consciousness of Atman is a divided and limited kind of consciousness that is the nature of all individual consciousness, as in your consciousness or my consciousness, while the undivided and unlimited consciousness of Brahman is the ultimate nature of consciousness, as in the Source of all consciousness. All individual consciousness must be divided from undivided consciousness. That individual consciousness always arises at a point of view. The individual perceiving consciousness of Atman is always present at the central point of view of its own perceivable world as it perceives everything in that world.
The individual consciousness of Atman, present at the central point of view of its own world as it perceives everything in that world, seems as though it is a personal consciousness that belongs to a person in that world, but that perception is an illusion. The form of a person that appears in the world the perceiving consciousness of Atman perceives is just another thing that appears in that world. Atman is present at the central point of view of that world and perceives everything in that world, including the form of the person to which that consciousness seems to belong. In reality, everything in that world, including the form of the person, belongs to Atman. Atman can only appear to be a person in that world when it identifies itself with the form of that person. Personal self-identification is an illusion created as Atman identifies itself with a person.
The illusion of personal self-identification is created due to the expression of emotions. The expression of emotional energy is what animates the form of a person. Atman not only perceives the form of the person but also the flow of emotional energy that animates that form. Organs of sensory perception in the form of a body are only transmitting this flow of emotional energy. The form of a person is like the central character in a virtual reality movie that Atman is watching. As Atman perceives the emotional energy animating that form, Atman feels emotionally self-limited to that animated form, which naturally leads Atman to identify itself with that personal form. In reality, Atman is at the central point of view of its own world and perceives everything in that world, including the form of the person that it mistakenly takes itself to be in that world.
When we say that God sees everything, but from many different points of view, this refers to the undivided consciousness of Brahman becoming divided into the many different points of view of Atman. Each point of view, which is a presence of perceiving consciousness of Atman at the center of its own world, perceives everything in that world. Each presence of perceiving consciousness of Atman perceives its own world. That world is inherently limited, and so the presence of perceiving consciousness of Atman at the center of that world is not only divided but also limited. These points of view arise within the undivided and unlimited nature of Brahman.
Atman-Brahman
Nothingness
The key concept is that Brahman is the Source of Atman, but there are many different points of view at which a presence of perceiving consciousness of Atman can arise, each at the center of its own world and each perceiving everything in that world. The consciousness of Brahman is unlimited and undivided, while each presence of perceiving consciousness of Atman that arises within Brahman at the central point of view of its own world is divided and limited. Each point of view of Atman arises within the undivided and unlimited nature of Brahman.
In terms of the true nature of existence, Brahman is understood as the underlying reality or the ground of existence. If we understand that the true nature of being is consciousness, then that underlying reality or ground of existence is undivided and unlimited being. The absolute nothingness of Brahman is the ground of being that is inherently undivided and unlimited. The individual being of Atman, which is inherently divided and limited, arises within the undivided and unlimited being of Brahman. Brahman is the Source of Atman. The individual being of Atman is often referred to as I Am. Atman is aware of its own inherent sense of being present, or I-Am-ness, as it perceives everything in its own perceivable world from the central point of view of that world. The individual being of Atman is a spiritual presence of perceiving consciousness at the center of its own perceivable world, and is aware of its own inherent sense of being present. Brahman is the spiritual Source of that spiritual presence of perceiving consciousness.
In the sense of personal self-identification, Atman is mistakenly attributing or imparting its own sense of being present or I-Am-ness to the emotionally animated form of a person it perceives in its own world due to its perception of feelings of emotional self-limitation to that personal form. This feeling of personal self-limitation gives rise to a personal self-concept, as self-referential thoughts are created in the form I am a person in the world I perceive that is emotionally related to other things I perceive in that world. The personal self-concept can only arise through the emotional expression of self-referential thoughts. In reality, these self-referential thoughts are no more real than the self-referential narration of a movie by the central character of that movie. In reality, self-referential thoughts are only false beliefs that Atman believes about itself, otherwise known as a delusion. Atman only believes these false beliefs about itself that it is the central character in the movie of the world it perceives due to the emotional energy that animates these thoughts, which makes Atman feel emotionally self-limited to that personal form.
The individual presence of perceiving consciousness of Atman is called the Self because Atman always perceives things in a subject-object relation that defines self and other. Atman is the observer of its own observable world, and that subject-object relation of self and other arises as the observer observes some observable thing in that observable world. The thing to be clear about is that the Self is not a self-concept. The Self is a presence of perceiving consciousness at the center of its own perceivable world. A self-concept, which is emotionally created in the form of a self-referential thought, is another thing perceived in that world. The subjective nature of Atman is that spiritual presence of perceiving consciousness at the center of its own world, while the objective nature of all things in that world are the perceivable things that can be perceived by Atman. In some sense, those perceivable things are an illusion created as Atman perceives them. The perceivable things can only appear to come into existence as Atman perceives them.
The absolute nothingness of Brahman can be understood as the potentiality to create all the perceivable things that Atman perceives in its own world. Those perceivable things only appear to come into existence as Atman perceives them. If those perceivable things are not perceived by Atman, those things remain in an unperceived state of potentiality. The absolute nothingness of Brahman is the pure potentiality to create the perceivable things, but Atman must perceive them before they can appear to come into existence. If Atman does not perceive that perceivable world, then that world disappears from existence from that particular point of view. In the sense of awakening from its dream, when that perceivable world disappears from existence, the divided perceiving consciousness of Atman, present at the central point of view of that world, must return to and reunite itself with the undivided consciousness of Brahman. This reunion is often described as an oceanic experience, like a drop of water that dissolves back into the ocean.
When we say that God sees everything, but from many different points of view, this refers to the perceiving consciousness of Atman arising at many different points of view within the absolute nothingness of Brahman. Brahman is the Source of each presence of perceiving consciousness of Atman that arises at the central point of view of its own world as it perceives everything in that world. Many points of view of Atman can arise within Brahman. These different points of view each perceive their own world, but can share a consensual reality in the sense that the perceivable things of one world are related to the perceivable things of another world to the degree that those perceivable worlds overlap in the sense of a Venn diagram. This overlapping of perceivable worlds, each perceived by a presence of perceiving consciousness at the central point of view of that world, is possible because each perceivable world is inherently limited.
Overlapping Limited Worlds Create the Appearance of a Consensual Reality Shared by Many Observers, each Present at the Central Point of View of its own Perceivable World
At this point, we’ve gone about as far as we can in terms of explaining the nature of things in terms of the ancient concepts of Advaita Vedanta. If we want to go further in terms of explaining things, we’ll have to rely on scientific explanations, which means we’ll have to use scientific concepts. The remarkable thing is that in the last 25 years, modern physics has supplied us with those scientific concepts in terms of what is called the holographic principle of quantum gravity.
In the explanations that follow in this article, the holographic principle will only be discussed at a basic level, just enough to flesh out the argument. For those interested in the mathematical details, the holographic principle is discussed at greater length and in more detail in following articles. The references also include many scientific books and articles that substantiate these ideas, but to gain a scientific understanding of the nondual concepts of Advaita Vedanta, it is only necessary to understand the holographic principle at a basic level. It turns out that is pretty easy to do without the use of much math since the holographic principle is fundamentally a geometric concept, and all of us have the inherent intuitive ability to understand geometry.
The holographic principle is formulated in terms of an observer observing its own holographic world. The observer observing observable things in its own holographic world always defines a subject-object relation. The true nature of the subject is the observer. The objective nature of all observable things the observer can observe are forms of information animated in the flow of energy. The holographic principle tells us that these forms of information can always be reduced to quantized bits of information, called qubits, encoded on a holographic screen. In some sense, the perception of an observable thing by the observer is like the projection of an image from a computer screen to the point of view of an observer outside the screen. The observer’s holographic screen is like a computer that encodes bits of information on pixels, and the perception of a form of information is like the projection of an image from the screen to the observer’s point of view outside the screen. The images of things are always reducible to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen. Those projected images are then animated in the flow of energy, just like the energy that energizes the operation of a computer.
The Observer, the Screen and the Thing
The holographic principle is telling us that everything the observer can observe in its own holographic world is reducible to qubits of information encoded on its own holographic screen. In reality, all the observable things the observer can observe are nothing more than forms of information projected like images from the observer’s own holographic screen to its own point of view and animated over a sequence of holographic projections in the flow of energy, just like the projected and animated frames of a movie projected from and animated on a computer screen.
The observable things the observer can observe in its own holographic world not only include macroscopic things, like bodies, planets, stars and galaxies, but also microscopic things, like atoms and molecules, and elementary particles like electrons and photons of the electromagnetic force that comprise atoms, and quarks and gluons of the strong nuclear force that comprise the atomic nucleus. All of these observable things are forms of information that can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen. The observer can also observe the flow of energy through its own holographic world that animates the form of all these observable things. Both the form of things, which are projected like images from the observer’s own holographic screen to its own point of view, and the flow of energy through the observer’s own holographic world, which animates the form of all things, are observable. Only the observer can observe all these observable things, but the holographic principle goes even further in terms of explaining the nature of observable things that can appear in the observer’s holographic world.
The 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry of the observer’s holographic world is also observable and can be observed by the observer. The holographic principle says that the 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry of the observer’s holographic world is reducible to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s own holographic screen. That’s what makes the observer’s world a holographic world. All the qubits of information that define whatever can appear to happen in some bounded three dimensional region of space are encoded on the two dimensional bounding surface of that space, which acts as the observer’s holographic screen. All the observable objects that appear to occupy space in that three dimensional bounded region of space are reducible to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s two dimensional holographic screen that arises as a bounding surface of space. The observable objects are forms of information projected like images from the observer’s holographic screen to its point of view and animated in the flow of energy that energizes the observer’s holographic world over an animated sequence of holographic projections, just like the animated frames of a movie projected from a computer screen. The observer’s 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry of its own holographic world arises as forms of information are projected from its holographic screen and appear to occupy three dimensional space and are animated in the flow of energy, like the projected and animated frames of a movie. The images of the movie are holographic and appear to occupy three dimensional space even though they’re reducible to qubits of information encoded on a two dimensional holographic screen. The perception of three dimensional space arises through holographic projection. The perception of the dimension of time arises in the sense of the perceivable flow of energy through that holographic world and the holographic animation of those images.
The observer is observing the dynamical nature of its own 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry that characterizes its holographic world, which is reducible to qubits of information encoded on its holographic screen and the flow of energy through that holographic world. The dynamical nature of this 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry is understood in relativity theory to be the nature of gravity in the sense of the dynamical curvature of space-time geometry. The force of gravity is nothing more than this dynamical curvature of the observer’s space-time geometry, which is formulated in relativity theory in terms of Einstein’s field equations for the space-time metric. The space-time metric is a field, just like the fields of the electromagnetic force or the nuclear forces. The space-time metric is the field of the gravitational force, which is understood as the dynamical curvature of space-time geometry. The holographic principle says that all of these force fields can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen and the flow of energy through the observer’s holographic world.
In relativity theory, the observer is understood in the sense of a reference frame. The observer is nothing more than a point of view at the origin of its own coordinate system. That’s what a frame of reference means in relativity theory. From the point of view of other observers, the observer is following a world-line through their space-time geometry, but from the observer’s own point of view, the observer is at the center of its own space-time geometry. The holographic principle is telling us that the dynamical nature of the observer’s own curved 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry, which is the nature of gravity in the observer’s holographic world, can only arise in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. This is a consequence of the principle of equivalence, which tells us the observed force of gravity is equivalent to the observer’s acceleration. Only an accelerating observer observes the force of gravity since that force is always equivalent to the observer’s acceleration. The only way we can even discuss the dynamical nature of the observer’s curved 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry that gives rise to the force of gravity is to discuss an observer in an accelerated frame of reference. This idea of an observer in an accelerated frame of reference is the key that unlocks all the secrets of the holographic principle. The observer’s holographic screen can only arise when the observer is in an accelerated frame of reference. The observer’s acceleration is what gives rise to the observer’s holographic screen. The observer’s holographic screen can always be understood as an event horizon that arises in the observer’s own accelerated frame of reference. At a very deep level, the observer’s accelerated motion is what is creating the appearance of its own holographic world.
Principle of Equivalence
What gives rise to the observer’s holographic screen? The observer’s holographic screen can always be understood as a two dimensional bounding surface of space that bounds some three dimensional region of space. In relativity theory, this two dimensional bounding surface of space is understood to arise as an event horizon in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. Every accelerating observer has its observations of things in space limited by an event horizon. The observer’s event horizon is as far out in space as the observer can see things in space due to the limitation of the speed of light, which is like the maximal rate of information transfer in three dimensional space. The speed of light is constant for all observers, independent of their relative states of motion, and that constancy of the speed of light gives rise to the limitation of an event horizon that limits the observer’s observations of things in space. Nothing is observable to an accelerating observer beyond the limits of its own event horizon.
Accelerating Observer’s Event Horizon
How does the observer’s event horizon turn into its own holographic screen that encodes qubits of information for everything the observer can observe in its own holographic world, including the dynamical nature of the observer’s own curved 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry? The answer is found in all consistent theories of quantum gravity. The first consistent theory of quantum gravity discovered was string theory. String theory then morphed into M-theory, and from M-theory it became possible to deduce the AdS/CFT correspondence, which explicitly confirmed the holographic principle in a mathematically rigorous way. The AdS/CFT correspondence proves that it is possible to construct a holographic world in which all the fundamental quantized bits of information for that world are encoded on a holographic screen, which is a lower dimensional bounding surface of space that bounds a higher dimensional region of space. In the AdS/CFT correspondence, the qubits of information are encoded by a conformal field theory. In the case of the AdS/CFT correspondence, that conformal field theory is a super-symmetric SU(N) Yang-Mills field theory, similar to the field theories of the strong and weak nuclear forces. There is no force of gravity on the lower dimensional bounding surface of space that acts as a holographic screen, only a conformal field theory. The force of gravity only appears to be active within the higher dimensional bounded region of space. This appearance of the force of gravity within the bounded region of space in some sense is a holographic illusion that results from holographic projection. All the fundamental qubits of information that describe the effect of gravity in the bounded region of space are encoded on the bounding surface of that space. The effect of gravity in the bounded region of space can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen, which can always be understood as an event horizon that arises in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference.
The easiest way to understand how qubits of information are encoded on the observer’s event horizon, which turns the horizon into a holographic screen, is with non-commutative geometry, which also explains how space-time geometry is quantized. String theory and M-theory can be understood as special cases of non-commutative geometry, as can fractal geometries. With non-commutative geometry, each quantized position coordinate on the observer’s event horizon specified by a non-commuting variable is smeared out into an area element like a pixel that encodes a quantized bit of information or qubit. In quantum gravity, the pixel size is called the Planck area. This gives the observer’s event horizon an entropy as S=kn, where n is the number of qubits encoded on the event horizon, which is proportional to the surface area A of the horizon as n=A/4ℓ2, where ℓ2=ħG/c3 is the Planck area. Each Planck area on the horizon acts like a pixel that encodes a qubit of information. Non-commutative geometry fundamentally explains how the qubits are encoded on a holographic screen in terms of quantizing position coordinates on the screen, which smears out each quantized position coordinate into an area element like a pixel that encodes a qubit of information. In non-commutative geometry, quantized position coordinates are specified by non-commuting variables. The entropy of the observer’s event horizon is given in terms of the number of qubits encoded on the horizon. The smallest possible event horizon that can encode a single qubit of information is a Planck-sized event horizon. This fundamentally explains why the Planck length is the smallest possible measurable distance scale. A Planck sized event horizon is the smallest possible horizon that can encode a single qubit of information.
Qubit as the Information Encoded on a Planck-sized Event Horizon
Holographic Principle
Quantum entanglement is the natural result of the superposition of quantum states. In quantum gravity, information states are entangled. This implies the entropy of the observer’s event horizon is an entanglement entropy. This is consistent with the holographic principle as understood with non-commutative geometry since all the qubits of information encoded on the observer’s event horizon that acts as a holographic screen are entangled. This is represented by the superposition of information states for that world. A holographic world defined by the qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen is fundamentally a world where everything is connected to everything else at the level of quantum entanglement. All the information states for that world are entangled, and so that holographic world is inherently holistically connected.
The idea of quantum entanglement is inherent in the holographic principle as understood with non-commutative geometry. All the quantized bits of information or qubit encoded on an event horizon that acts as a holographic screen are inherently entangled, which is understood in terms of matrices. Quantum entanglement allows qubits to be defined in a rotationally invariant way. This is much like the way quantum theory defines spin ½ particles in terms of a 2×2 SU(2) matrix. The SU(2) matrix gives a representation of rotational symmetry on the surface of a sphere, but its two eigenvalues also define spin up and spin down states. These two spin states give a representation of information in a binary code, like a switch that is either on or off. The spin up and spin down states are like vectors that point up or down, but when these spin states are in a superposition of states and are entangled, the vector can point in any direction, and so rotational symmetry is preserved. With the holographic principle, the n qubits of information encoded on a spherically symmetric holographic screen can be defined by the n eigenvalues of an nxn SU(2) matrix, which are inherently entangled.
We still have to explain the flow of energy through the observer’s holographic world. Where does that energy come from? The answer is that energy comes from the observer’s own acceleration. The observer’s acceleration gives rise to the observer’s event horizon that acts as its own holographic screen when its event horizon encodes qubits of information, but that acceleration also gives rise to the flow of energy through the observer’s own holographic world.
The secret behind the flow of energy through the observer’s own holographic world is the Unruh temperature of the observer’s event horizon as observed by the accelerating observer in its own accelerated frame of reference. The Unruh temperature of the observer’s event horizon arises as the energy of thermal radiation the accelerating observer observes emitted from its own event horizon. This is the thermal energy that flows through the observer’s own holographic world as observed in the observer’s own accelerated frame of reference. This energy is given in terms of the Unruh temperature of the observer’s event horizon as E=kT, which is proportional to the observer’s acceleration, a, as kT=ħa/2πc. In effect, the observer’s acceleration is defining a frequency in the sense that E=hf, which is the fundamental defining relation between energy and frequency in quantum theory. The Unruh temperature arises as the temperature of thermal radiation the accelerating observer observes emitted from its event horizon. This thermal radiation arises from separation of virtual particle-antiparticle pairs at the event horizon as observed by the accelerating observer. This thermal radiation is called Hawking radiation.
Hawking Radiation
Hawking radiation is confusing since it mixes up concepts of the holographic principle with the quantum field theory formulation of point particles. In quantum field theory, uncertainty in energy allows virtual particle-antiparticle pairs to become created within the vacuum state for a short period of time. The virtual pairs are created out of nothing and then normally annihilate back into nothing, but from the point of view of an accelerating observer, something weird appears to happen. The accelerating observer’s observations of things in space are limited by its event horizon. At the observer’s event horizon, the virtual particle-antiparticle pairs can appear to separate. One member of the pair can disappear behind the event horizon while the other member of the pair can appear to be radiated away from the event horizon toward the observer. The observer observes this radiated particle as a particle of thermal radiation, which gives its event horizon an apparent temperature. The observer’s event horizon is acting as a holographic screen that encodes quantized bits of information for point particles that can appear in the observer’s holographic world, but the separation of virtual particle-antiparticle pairs at the event horizon gives the event horizon an apparent temperature proportional to the observer’s acceleration.
Hawking radiation is weird. The key thing to realize is that although it appears that virtual particle-antiparticle pairs are separating at the event horizon as observed by the accelerating observer and that thermal particles of Hawking radiation are radiated towards the observer, the fundamental quantized bits of information that define all those particles of Hawking radiation are actually encoded on the event horizon, which is acting as the observer’s holographic screen.
The holographic principle is telling us that each Planck area defined on the observer’s event horizon is acting like a pixel that encodes a quantized bit of information. The particles of Hawking radiation that the accelerating observer perceives to be radiated away from the event horizon are reducible to quantized bits of information encoded on the event horizon, which is acting as the observer’s holographic screen. The essential lesson of the holographic principle is that particles that appear to exist in three dimensional space and appear to move through three dimensional space can always be reduced to quantized bits of information encoded on a two dimensional bounding surface of space that bounds that three dimensional region of space and acts as a holographic screen. That bounding surface of space can always be understood as an event horizon that arises in an observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The accelerating observer is observing events in its own holographic world as displayed on its own holographic screen. Those perceivable events can always be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen, which gives rise to the form of things, and the flow of energy that animates those forms. This flow of energy can be understood in terms of the Unruh temperature of the observer’s event horizon as the thermal energy that arises from the observer’s acceleration.
The laws of thermodynamics relate a change in total energy to temperature and a change in entropy as ΔE=TΔS. The laws of thermodynamics are not really laws of physics, but rather very general statistical relations that specify how thermal energy flows from hotter to colder objects in terms of the dynamical degrees of freedom of those objects. This specifies how objects carry thermal energy, which is understood as the random kinetic energy of those objects. In terms of the holographic principle, the fundamental nature of the dynamical degrees of freedom of all objects are qubits of information encoded on an observer’s holographic screen, which is the nature of the entropy that characterizes those objects. The fundamental reason for this relation between energy and entropy is each qubit of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen carries an amount of thermal energy E=kT given in terms of the Unruh temperature at thermal equilibrium. The laws of thermodynamics assume thermal equilibrium. Each qubit of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen is a fundamental dynamical degree of freedom for the observer’s holographic world. The equal partition of energy tells us that each dynamical degree of freedom, which is a qubit of information, carries an equal amount of energy E=kT at thermal equilibrium, which defines temperature. As more qubits of information are encoded on the observer’s holographic screen, more energy is inherent in that holographic world.
Where do the laws of physics come from? The holographic principle gives a perfectly good answer, as Ted Jacobson and Tom Banks have both demonstrated. The space-time geometry of the observer’s world appears to obey computational rules inherent in Einstein’s field equations for the space-time metric. The matter particles that constitute the nature of all matter in that world and the force particles that transmit the electromagnetic and nuclear forces between all matter particles also obey computational rules inherent in the quantum field theory formulation of the standard model of particle physics. The holographic appearance of that world in terms of both the space-time geometry and the particle physics of that world is constructed out of qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen. That holographic construction process obeys computational rules, like the rules that govern the operation of a computer, but the computational rules that govern the holographic appearance of the 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry and the particle physics of the observer’s world aren’t even exact. The rules arise as thermodynamic equations of state that only give an approximate thermal average description of the observer’s world with a limited range of validity in the sense of thermodynamics.
Einstein’s Field Equations for the Space-time Metric
To begin with, we can deduce Einstein’s field equations for the space-time metric, which is the nature of gravity, from the holographic principle. Einstein’s field equations are thermodynamic equations of state that arise from the laws of thermodynamics that relate energy to entropy and temperature, ΔE=TΔS. Ted Jacobson has shown how this derivation goes forward in terms of the area law for the entropy of the observer’s event horizon and the Unruh temperature of that event horizon as observed by the accelerating observer in its accelerated frame of reference. As heat flows across a bounding surface of space, the total energy of that bounded region of space must change, which implies a thermodynamic change in the entropy of that bounded region of space. The holographic principle then tells us the area of the bounding surface must change, which implies a change in the geometry of the bounded region. Jacobson showed this change in the geometry of the bounded region is described by Einstein’s field equations for the space-time metric. Einstein’s field equations only have the validity of a thermodynamic equation of state. Once we have Einstein’s field equations, all quantum fields of the standard model of particle physics can then be deduced as extra components of the space-time metric with the usual unification mechanisms of extra compactified dimensions of space and super-symmetry. The final result of unification looks alot like 11-dimensional supergravity, which is understood as a low energy limit of M-theory. It therefore turns out that the whole quantum field theory formulation of the standard model of particle physics and the relativistic space-time geometry formulation of gravity can be deduced from the holographic principle.
All we really need to explain the quantum field theory formulation of particle physics and the relativistic space-time geometry formulation of gravity is an observer in an accelerated frame of reference, which gives rise to an event horizon. Apply non-commutative geometry to that event horizon as a way to quantize position coordinates on the horizon, along with the usual unification mechanisms of super-symmetry and extra compactified dimensions of space, and we have an explanation for how to generate all the qubits of information that define everything in a holographic world. The form of everything in that world is reducible to qubits of information. Even the flow of energy that animates everything in that world can be understood in terms of the observer’s accelerated frame of reference and the Unruh temperature of its event horizon. Each quantized position coordinate defined by a non-commuting variable on the observer’s event horizon is smeared out into an area element like a pixel that encodes a qubit of information. This encoding process not only includes information for all the elementary particles of that world that underlie the electromagnetic and nuclear forces, but also the space-time geometry of that world that underlies the effect of gravity. The only thing that seems to be fundamental to the explanation is the observer itself. The holographic principle is telling us that only the observer has its own independent existence, which fundamentally is the existence of consciousness.
Any thermodynamic equation of state describing a physical system implies thermal equilibrium, which means the dynamical degrees of freedom of that system are thermalized or randomized in terms of their thermal energy. A thermodynamic equation of state is not valid when the system is not at thermal equilibrium. Since Einstein’s field equations for the space-time metric, which is the nature of gravity, and the quantum field theories of the standard model of particle physics, which is the nature of physical matter and the electromagnetic and nuclear physical forces, are only thermodynamic equations of state for the physical universe, these equations do not apply when the physical universe is not at thermal equilibrium. As Roger Penrose has often pointed out, the physical universe is definitely not at thermal equilibrium, as is demonstrated by the normal flow of energy through the physical universe. It makes no sense to try to understand the nature of the physical universe in terms of equations that are not fundamental and only give an approximate thermal average description of the physical universe. If we are to have any hope of understanding the nature of the physical universe, we have to go beyond the simple understanding of the universe in terms of what we call the laws of physics inherent in Einstein’s field theory for gravity and the quantum field theories of the standard model of particle physics. We have to start understanding the physical universe in terms of the holographic principle. We have to start understanding the perceivable physical world in terms of the observer of that world.
Normal Flow of Energy through the Observer’s Perceivable World
The physical universe is not at thermal equilibrium because space is expanding in the physical universe. The accelerated nature of the expansion of space, which is called dark energy, is the primordial energy that puts the bang in the big bang event. The idea of creation of the universe in a big bang is based on the idea of the expansion of space. As is well known, the expansion of space implies a cosmic horizon that limits the observations of the observer at the central point of view of that bounding surface of space. The holographic principle tells us the observer’s cosmic horizon defines its own world whenever space expands since that is where all the fundamental qubits of information for that world are encoded. Inherent in the idea of the big bang is the idea the observer’s observable world increases in size as space expands. This implies the observer’s cosmic horizon increases in radius as the observer’s world increases in size. As the observer’s cosmic horizon increases in radius, its Unruh temperature cools, which explains the normal flow of heat in the observer’s world as heat flows from hotter to colder objects. This also explains the second law of thermodynamics which says entropy tends to increase as heat flows in a thermal gradient. As the observer’s cosmic horizon increases in radius, its Unruh temperature cools, but its surface area increases, which implies the entropy of the observer’s world increases even as its world cools, since more qubits of information are encoded on the observer’s cosmic horizon. The normal flow of heat in the thermal gradient created as the observer’s world increases in size with the expansion of space explains the direction of time’s arrow and the normal flow of energy through the observer’s holographic world. The direction of time’s arrow is literally directed in the direction of the expansion of space that gives rise to the creation of the physical universe.
Creation of the Universe as the Expansion of Space
What’s Wrong with Particle Physics?
The correct way to think about physics is in terms of the fundamental dynamical degrees of freedom that characterize physical reality. In the point particle formulation of physics, those dynamical degrees of freedom are taken to be particle coordinates that arise in some fixed background space-time-time geometry, like Minkowski space. The problem with the point particle formulation of particle physics is this is a mistaken assumption. In reality, there are no point particles and there is no fixed space-time geometry. The most general way that particle physics can formulate these point particle dynamical degrees of freedom is in terms of the quantum wavefunction, which in quantum field theory is formulated in terms of quantum fields. There are some technical issues in terms of first quantization and second quantization, but in essence the quantum field is the quantum wavefunction that specifies the quantum probability with which a quantum particle can be localized at some point in space at some moment in time in the fixed background space-time geometry, which is usually taken to be Minkowski space. For example, the quantum field of the Dirac equation specifies the quantum probability that the electron can be localized as some point in space at some moment of time. The Schrodinger equation for the hydrogen atom is just a non-relativistic limit of the Dirac equation. In quantum field theory, we also have Maxwell’s equations for the photon field. The electron and photon are both quantum particles, each characterized by their own quantum field. Electrons can interact with each other through the electromagnetic force by emitting and absorbing or by exchanging photons, and with second quantization, photons can create virtual electron-positron pairs that can annihilate back into photons, which is like the electromagnetic interaction run backwards in time. The key point is that the quantum wavefunction specifies the quantum probability with which a quantum particle can be localized at some point in space at some moment in time in the fixed background space-time geometry. If that quantum wavefunction is highly localized like a delta-function, then we can recover the Newtonian version of classical particle physics that describes the particle as following a point particle trajectory x=x(t) through the fixed background space-time geometry. This is only possible since the quantum wavefunction ѱ=ѱ(x,t) is defined in the fixed background space-time geometry. The point particle coordinates are taken to be the fundamental dynamical degrees of freedom of the point particle formulation of particle physics, which can only be defined in a fixed background space-time geometry. A big problem arises when we try to add gravity to the other fundamental forces, like electromagnetism. By its very nature, gravity is the dynamical curvature of a space-time geometry. There is simply no logically consistent way to quantize gravity as a quantum field theory since we would then have to assume that we have a fixed background space-time geometry, which contradicts the very idea of gravity as the dynamical curvature of a space-time geometry.
The holographic principle is the only known logically consistent way to resolve this problem. The fundamental dynamical degrees of freedom of physical reality are not point particle coordinates defined in some fixed background space-time geometry, but rather qubits of information defined on a holographic screen. The holographic screen in turn is understood as an event horizon that arises in an observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The observer’s event horizon is a two dimensional bounding surface of space that bounds some three dimensional region of space. Particle coordinates defined in that bounded three dimensional region of space are not fundamental dynamical degrees of freedom, but can only arise in some approximate sense in terms of a thermodynamic equation of state. All the quantum field theories of particle physics along with Einstein’s field equations for the space-time metric as a formulation for gravity can only arise as thermal averages in the sense of a thermodynamic equation of state.
The fundamental dynamical degrees of freedom that actually define physical reality are qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen, which arises as an event horizon in an observer’s accelerated frame of reference, but even the qubits are not really fundamental. To turn the event horizon into a holographic screen and encode qubits of information on the screen, we have to invoke some sort of geometric mechanism like non-commutative geometry that explains how qubits of information are encoded on the observer’s event horizon. We also have to assume there is an observer in an accelerated frame of reference before we can invoke this geometric mechanism. At the end of the day, an observer in its accelerated frame of reference is more fundamental than its holographic screen. In other words, the consciousness of the observer and the energy inherent in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference are both more fundamental than the qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen that act as the fundamental dynamical degrees of freedom of the observer’s holographic physical world.
The holographic principle is telling us that the fundamental nature of the universe is qubits of information encoded on an observer’s holographic screen. That’s what makes the universe a holographic universe. The observer’s holographic screen is understood as an event horizon that arises in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The accelerating observer’s event horizon is a bounding surface of space that limits the observer’s observation of things in space due to the constancy of the speed of light for all observers, independent of their relative states of motion.
The holographic principle says that every accelerating observer has its own holographic world defined on its own holographic screen that arises as an event horizon in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The observer’s holographic screen is where all the qubits of information for everything observable in the observer’s world are encoded. Things don’t really exist in three dimensional space. Everything observable in three dimensional space is a holographic illusion that arises as a holographic form of information for that thing is projected like an image from the observer’s holographic screen, which is a two dimensional bounding surface of space, to the observer’s central point of view in space, which always arises in relation to that holographic screen. The observation of things appearing in three dimensional space is a holographic illusion that results from holographic projection. This even applies to elementary particles, like photons and electrons. All the fundamental qubits of information for an elementary particle are encoded on the observer’s holographic screen. The observer’s observation of an elementary particle, like anything else it can observe in its holographic world, is only the observation of a form of information projected like an image from the observer’s holographic screen to its central point of view. Everything observable arises through holographic projection.
The holographic principle gives a perfectly good explanation for how the observer’s world is created in terms of the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. Everything the observer can observe in its world arises through holographic projection, as a form of information is projected like an image from the observer’s holographic screen to its central point of view. The observer’s holographic screen always arises as an event horizon in its own accelerated frame of reference. That event horizon acts as a holographic screen in the sense of encoding qubits of information, which are the fundamental dynamical degrees of freedom of its holographic world. Everything perceivable in its holographic world is a form of information constructed out of qubits encoded on the observer’s holographic screen. Even the flow of energy that animates those forms of information is inherent in the observer’s own accelerated frame of reference in the sense of thermodynamics and the Unruh temperature of its event horizon.
Everything perceivable in the observer’s holographic world arises through holographic projection. Even the 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry of that world arises through holographic projection. Just like all other perceivable things, space-time geometry can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen, and the perception of space-time geometry is no more real than forms of information projected like images from the screen to the observer’s central point of view. The space-time geometry the observer observes in its world has no independent existence. If the observer doesn’t observe it, that space-time geometry doesn’t really exist. Everything the observer observes in its world, including the space-time geometry of that world, is dependent on the observer’s observation of it before it can appear to come into existence. If the observer does not observe it, it does not exist, except in the sense of an unobserved state of potentiality. That’s exactly what quantum theory tells us. The observation of space-time geometry, just like anything else the observer can observe, is only an illusion of existence in the sense of holographic projection.
Most physicists cannot accept this state of affairs since space-time geometry, like everything else that can be perceived in the world, appears to obey computational rules. The space-time geometry of the observer’s world appears to obey the computational rules inherent in Einstein’s field equations for the space-time metric. How can something that’s not really real and doesn’t really exist obey computational rules? The simple answer is, that’s the inherent nature of a holographic world. The holographic appearance of that world is constructed out of the qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen, and that holographic construction process obeys computational rules, like the rules that govern the operation of a computer. The computational rules that govern the holographic appearance of the 3+1 dimensional space-time geometry of the observer’s world aren’t even exact. These rules arise as thermodynamic equations of state and are only an approximation with a limited range of validity in the sense of thermodynamics, which only gives an approximate thermal average description of the observer’s world.
When the observer observes a particle located at some position in space and the motion of that particle through space over the course of time, the observer is really only observing a form of information projected like an image from its own holographic screen to its own point of view and animated over a sequence of holographic projections, just like the animation of the projected images of a movie from a computer screen to an observer. The reason we can say this with confidence is because all of particle physics can be formulated in terms of quantum field theory, and we can deduce all of quantum field theory from the holographic principle.
By its very nature, an observation of the world implies an observer is making that observation, but who exactly is the observer? Modern physics has no answer for the true nature of the observer. Physicists want to sweep this problem under the rug and ignore it because they really have nothing to say about the true nature of the observer. The whole enterprise of physics is really only about describing what is observable and not about what is making the observation.
In some sense, perceivable reality is just like a computer generated virtual reality, which is constructed when digital images are projected from a computer screen to the point of view of an observer that perceives those images and as the images are animated over the course of time in the flow of energy. If the computer generated projected digital images are holographic in nature, the images appear to occupy three dimensional space even though they can be reduced to bits of information encoded on a two dimensional computer screen. The images of that virtual reality not only include visual images, but also auditory images and tactile images. Not only is the form of things perceivable, but the flow of energy that animated the form of things is also perceivable. The holographic principle is telling us that in no real sense is perceivable reality any different in any significant way than a computer generated holographic virtual reality.
What about the observer that perceives that perceivable reality? What is the true nature of the reality of the observer? Is the observer also an aspect of the perceivable reality that the observer perceives? Can the observer itself be reduced to the bits of information encoded on a holographic screen that gives rise to the appearance of the form of all things that appear to occupy space or to the flow of energy that animates those forms over the course of time? Wouldn’t that assumption that the observer itself can be reduced to an aspect of the perceivable reality that the observer perceives create a logically inconsistent paradox of self-reference?
The problem is the form of a body and brain that appears within the holographic virtual reality must be constructed out of bits of information encoded on a holographic screen, like anything else that appears in that holographic virtual reality. Everything that appears in the holographic virtual reality can be reduced to bits of information encoded on a holographic screen. Can a body and brain that is a part of that holographic virtual reality also perceive that virtual reality? The only logically consistent answer is no. A body and brain that is part of the holographic virtual reality cannot be the observer that perceives that virtual reality. At most, a body and brain can only process or transmit information about that virtual reality. Just like a computer screen that projects images to the point of view of an observer that perceives those images, the observer is always outside the screen. Projected images can be reduced to bits of information encoded on the screen, but the observer of the images projected from the screen cannot be reduced to bits of information encoded on the screen. The observer’s point of view is always outside the screen.
The holographic principle is fundamentally telling us that the observer has its own existence that is independent of anything the observer can perceive in perceivable reality. The reality of the observer is independent of the perceivable reality the observer perceives. The nature of reality is exactly the other way around from what is conventionally assumed when we assume that a body and brain that appears in perceivable reality is an observer of that perceivable reality. That kind of assumption is a mistake in the sense of a logically inconsistent paradox of self-reference. The perceivable reality the observer perceives is dependent on the reality of the observer. Perceivable things only appear to come into existence when the observer perceives them. The apparent existence of perceivable things is dependent on the existence of the observer. Only the observer has its own existence that is independent of anything that the observer can perceive.
The big question is about the true nature of the observer’s consciousness in relation to whatever the observer happens to observe in its world. This question explodes when that observable world is understood to be a holographic world. A holographic world is no more real than images depicted on a holographic screen. The images can always be reduced to qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen. Who is really observing those images? Can an image observe itself? The holographic principle gives the only logically possible answer. The observer is nothing more than a point of perceiving consciousness at the center of its own holographic world that arises in relation to its own holographic screen.
What about the problem of multiple observers observing the same observable world? The problem with assuming that multiple observers exist in and observe the same observable world are all the paradoxes of quantum theory, like the Wigner friend paradox. The solution for this problem is the idea of a consensual reality shared among different observers, each of which arises at its own point of view in relation to its own holographic screen. A consensual reality can only arise in the sense of a Venn diagram of information sharing among different but overlapping holographic screens. The observer’s holographic screen can only arise as an event horizon in the observer’s own accelerated frame of reference, and so that holographic screen is inherently observer-dependent. The observer’s holographic screen is where all the qubits of information are encoded for the observer’s own holographic world. Every observer observes its own holographic world from its own point of view defined on its own event horizon that acts as a holographic screen, but those screens can overlap in the sense of a Venn diagram and share information. This problem of information sharing among overlapping holographic screens is the essence of the entanglement problem of quantum gravity, as Tom Banks has pointed out.
Overlapping Bounding Surfaces of Space Create the Appearance of a Consensual Reality
This way of understanding observation in terms of every observer observing its own holographic world from its own point of view eliminates all paradoxes like the Wigner friend paradox. Multiple observers simply cannot exist inside the same observable world without creating logically inconsistent paradoxes. Every observer observes its own holographic world from its own point of view. Different observers can only share a consensual reality due to information sharing among different but overlapping holographic worlds. This way of understanding the nature of observation raises fundamental questions about the true nature of the observer. These are fundamental questions about the true nature of observing consciousness.
Quantum theory in the context of the holographic principle is telling us that the observable physical world can only appear to come into existence in relation to the observations of the observer that observes that holographic world. Every observer must observe its own holographic world for that world to appear to come into existence. If the observer does not observe its own holographic world, that world remains in an unobserved state of potentiality. That unobserved state of potentiality is the nature of the quantum state. For the unobserved quantum state of potentiality of the world to come into an observed state of actuality, the observer must make an observation of that world. The time evolution of that world, as represented by the quantum wavefunction, only applies to the unobserved state of potentiality of that world. Measurement of that world, as represented by quantum state reduction or collapse of the wavefunction, only applies to the observer’s observation of its own holographic world, which reduces the state of potentiality of the observer’s world to an observed state of actuality. It cannot be stressed strongly enough that the observer’s world only appears to come into an actual state of existence when the observer observes that world. Without the observer’s observation of its own world, that world remains in an unobserved state of potentiality. Simply put, an observable world cannot appear to actually exist unless an observer observes it, but this raises fundamental questions about the true nature of the observer. What is the true nature of the observer’s own existence?
This fundamental relation of an observer observing its own observable world essentially defines a subject-object relation. The true nature of the subject is the observer. The holographic principle tells us that the objective nature of all things the observer can observe in its own observable world are forms of information that can always be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s own holographic screen, which can only arise as an event horizon in the observer’s own accelerated frame of reference. The holographic principle is telling us that in some sense the objective nature of all things the observer observes is a holographic illusion, since all observable things can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen. The observable things include the nature of all elementary particles that appear in space, including all the matter particles and all the force particles that transmit the electromagnetic and nuclear forces. The observable things also include the dynamical nature of space-time geometry, which is understood in relativity theory to be the nature of gravity. With the holographic principle, all of this observable stuff can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen, but that’s not the end of it.
Everything observable in the observer’s holographic world, including the observer’s own body and brain, can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s own holographic screen. The true subjective nature of the observer cannot be its body or brain, since these are only forms of information that appear in the observer’s own holographic world. At most, the observer’s own body and brain can only transmit or process information about the nature of that holographic world. A form of information is something observable, and cannot observe itself without creating a logically inconsistent paradox of self-reference. As quantum theory tells us, an observable object, which is a form of information, can only arise in a subject-object relation as the observer observes that observable thing. If the observer’s own body and brain is not the true nature of the observer observing its own observable world, then what is the true subjective nature of the observer? This is fundamentally a question about the true subjective nature of observing consciousness, which by simple deductive logical reasoning, cannot itself be reduced to an observable thing. A body and brain that appears inside an observable holographic world cannot be the true subjective nature of the observer of that holographic world.
Until we confront the true subjective nature of the observer, we will never be able to make any real progress in terms of understanding the objective nature of the physical reality that we observe. The problem with modern physics and the lack of an adequate resolution of the measurement problem of quantum theory is that we are not confronting the true subjective nature of the observer. Is there something that we don’t want to know? What exactly is it that we don’t want to know? These are fundamental questions like: Who is the observer? Who is the knower? What is the true subjective nature of observing consciousness? Who am I?
The holographic principle is fundamentally an observer-centric description of observable reality. The observable reality of the world we perceive is not only perceived in an observer-centric way, but also in an observer-dependent way. The holographic principle is telling us that the observer is a presence of perceiving consciousness at the center of its own holographic world.
The holographic principle fundamentally says that everything the observer can observe in its own holographic world can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on its own holographic screen, which is an event horizon that arises in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The observer’s body and the brain that appears in that holographic world can also be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen. The observer itself can only be understood as a presence of perceiving consciousness at the center of its own holographic world. Everything observable in a holographic world is reducible to information and energy, but the consciousness of the observer observing that world is not. Consciousness has its own independent existence. The apparent existence of a holographic world that is reducible to qubits of information encoded on the observer’s holographic screen and the flow of energy animating that world is dependent on the independent existence of the observer’s consciousness.
Only the observer itself can have its own independent existence, but we’d like to go further and understand the true nature of that existence. The observer itself can only be understood as a presence of consciousness present at the center of its own holographic world, but where does that presence of consciousness come from? This is where the void comes into the story. The void is the true nature of potentiality. The void can also be called the ultimate nature of existence or the ground of being, which is the potentiality for things to come into existence. As the ground of being, the void is the ultimate nature of reality. In-and-of-itself, the void only exists in the sense of absolute nothingness, but that nothingness is the potentiality for things to come into existence. The void is the potentiality to create all the energy and information inherent in a holographic world. The void is the ultimate nature of reality, and the holographic world it creates is a lesser form of reality, like a virtual reality. That virtual reality comes into existence because of the creation of the information and energy that underlies all observable things. These things not only include what physicists call elementary particles, but also the space-time geometry those observable things appear to exist within. Even the space-time geometry of a holographic world is observable, and in some sense is just another observable thing that can be reduced to information and energy. The space-time geometry of a holographic world is reducible to the qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen and the flow of energy through that holographic world just like everything else observable in that holographic world.
The way this creation process goes forward is in terms of the energy inherent in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The observer’s acceleration is where the energy comes from that animates the observer’s holographic world. The void is the potentiality to create the energy inherent in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The easiest way to understand how the void creates this energy is in terms of the expansion of space, which is the nature of dark energy. The expansion of space always gives rise to an event horizon with the observer at the central point of view of that bounding surface of space. The easiest way to understand how the void creates information is in terms of non-commutative geometry, which is a way to encode qubits of information on the observer’s event horizon that then turns into its holographic screen.
The void is the potentiality to create all the energy and information inherent in a holographic world, but where does the consciousness of the observer come from? The simplest answer is the consciousness of the observer also comes from the void. The void is the potentiality to give rise to the consciousness of the observer. The void is also consciousness, but it is a more fundamental kind of consciousness than the observer’s consciousness. The consciousness of the observer is an individual or divided kind of consciousness, while the void is undivided consciousness. The void is the potentiality for the observer’s consciousness to come into existence in the sense that the individual consciousness of the observer must be divided from the undivided consciousness of the void before the observer’s holographic world can appear to come into existence and be observed by the observer. The observation of that world is always limited by an event horizon that acts as a holographic screen.
The consciousness of the observer is not only divided, but it is also limited, while the consciousness of the void is unlimited and undivided. Only the observer’s consciousness can observe things in its own holographic world. Each such observation of something by the observer is the observation of a form of information projected like an image from the observer’s holographic screen to its central point of view. The consciousness of the void observes nothing because it has no holographic screen. The observer’s holographic screen is always a limitation of consciousness that can only arise in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference as an observation limiting event horizon. Only an observer can observe things in its own holographic world. This only becomes possible when the divided consciousness of the observer is limited by a holographic screen. The unlimited and undivided consciousness of the void observes nothing, and yet the void is the potentiality to create a holographic world and give rise to the consciousness of the observer that observes that holographic world from the central point of view of that world. This creation process can only appear to happen within the void if the consciousness of the observer is divided from the undivided consciousness of the void and that point of consciousness then enters into an accelerated frame of reference that gives rise to the limitation of a holographic screen that defines the observer’s holographic world.
The key concept of the one-world-per-observer paradigm inherent in the holographic principle is that the observer’s holographic world can only be created within the void through the construction of a holographic screen as the observer enters into an accelerated frame of reference, but before that creation can occur, the consciousness of the observer must be divided from the undivided consciousness of the void. The only reason the observer is unaware of the void is because the observer’s attention is totally focused on itself and its world. The process of the observer shifting the focus of its attention away from itself and its world, and back onto its source, is called awakening, as in awakening from a dream.
This relationship of the void to the observer is like the relationship of a dreamer to its dream. The unlimited and undivided consciousness of the void, which observes nothing, is the source of the limited and divided consciousness of the observer that observes its own holographic world. That holographic world is the dream, and the void is the dreamer. The consciousness of the observer is a divided fragment of the undivided consciousness of the void. The fragmented consciousness of the observer must be separated from the unfragmented consciousness of the void for that holographic world to appear to come into existence and be observed by the observer. The fragmented consciousness of the observer is always connected to its source in that this state of separation can come to an end at any moment and the divided consciousness of the observer can return to and reunite itself with the undivided consciousness of the void.
This state of reunion can be understood as an ultimate state of free fall in which the observer’s holographic world disappears from existence. The observer has no holographic screen in an ultimate state of free fall since it has no event horizon that limits its observations. Ironically, when there is no limitation of consciousness, there is also nothing to observe, and there is no separation. The void is this unlimited and undivided primordial state of consciousness, which is a state of pure potentiality. When that potentiality is expressed, an observable holographic world appears to come into existence and the consciousness of the observer becomes divided from the undivided consciousness of the void so that the observer can observe its own world. When that potentiality is not expressed, only the unlimited and undivided consciousness of the void exists. In that ultimate state of existence, nothing is observed. The void is that absolute nothingness, which in the sense of potentiality, is the true nature of what I am, you are, and everything is.
Nothingness
Atman-Brahman
How is the observer’s ultimate state of free fall even possible? The answer is the observer must be present to observe its own observable holographic world. Being present for its world means the observer must focus its attention on that world. If the observer withdraws its attention away from that world and is not present to observe that world, that world remains in an unobserved state of potentiality. Both the form of all things in that world and the flow of energy through that world remain in an unobserved state of potentiality. Without the expression of that energy, the observer no longer is in an accelerated frame of reference, but instead enters into an ultimate state of free fall. In this ultimate state of free fall, the observer no longer observes a holographic world. The observer’s holographic world disappears from existence from the observer’s own point of view. In the language of nonduality, this ultimate state of free fall is described as falling into the void. In this ultimate state of free fall, the observer’s individual existence, which is its own divided sense of being present or I-Am-ness, dissolves back into the undivided being of the void like a drop of water dissolves back into the ocean. This oceanic experience is the nature of the observer realizing the truth of what it really is, which is the truth of its own being.
This way of understanding the holographic principle has no logical inconsistencies or paradoxes. It is completely consistent with everything we know about modern physics, and is really the only way modern physics can be understood in a logically consistent way. The other great advantage of this way of understanding the holographic principle is that it’s totally consistent with what enlightened beings like Nisargadatta Maharaj tell us about the true nature of reality. Enlightened beings have directly experienced the true nature of reality. They have returned to the ultimate state of existence and come back to the world to tell us what is real and what is illusion.
When we say that God sees everything, but from many different points of view, we’re referring to the ultimate nature of God as the absolute nothingness of Brahman, and to each point of view as the perceiving consciousness of Atman that is present at the center of its own holographic world as it perceives everything in that world. Atman is the spiritual Self of that world, and Brahman is the spiritual Source of Atman. Brahman gives rise to many points of view, each of which perceives its own holographic world, but ultimately, all points of view arise in Brahman.
Ultimately, the true nature of the observer observing its own holographic world is the absolute nothingness of Brahman, which we also call the void. It is the void that creates a holographic world for its Self to experience. Brahman is the Source of its Self. To have those worldly experiences, the undivided and unlimited consciousness of the void must divide its Self into the divided and limited consciousness of the observer of that world, which is present at the central point of view of its own holographic world. All the experiences that the Self can experience in that holographic world arise from the void in the sense that the void must express energy in order to create that holographic world. The way this creation process goes forward is in terms of the energy inherent in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The observer’s acceleration is where all the energy comes from that animates the observer’s holographic world. The void is the potentiality to create the energy inherent in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference. The easiest way to understand how the void creates this energy is in terms of the expansion of space, which is the nature of dark energy. The expansion of space always gives rise to an event horizon with the observer at the central point of view of that bounding surface of space. The easiest way to understand how the void creates all the information for that holographic world is in terms of non-commutative geometry, which is a way to encode qubits of information on the observer’s event horizon, which then turns into its holographic screen. Modern physics demonstrates with the holographic principle that every experience the Self can experience in its own holographic world arises from the void and occurs within the void, which is the Source of the Self.
God sees everything, but from many different points of view, in the sense that the many different points of view of the Self arise within the Source. The holographic world that each point of view of the Self perceives is defined on its own holographic screen that encodes information for that holographic world. Everything the observer can observe in its own holographic world is a form of information projected like an image from its holographic screen to its central point of view and animated in the flow of energy through that holographic world. The holographic screen arises as an event horizon in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference, and the energy that animates that holographic world also arises from the observer’s accelerated frame of reference.
The possibility of many observers, each present at its own point of view within the void, sharing a consensual reality, only arises when their respective holographic screens overlap in the sense of Venn diagram and share information. This kind of information sharing is inherent in the holographic principle due to the phenomena of quantum entanglement. All the qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen are inherently entangled, but due to consistency relations among overlapping holographic screens, quantum entanglement allows for information sharing among overlapping holographic screens, which allows multiple observers to share a consensual reality. Every observer only observes things in its own holographic world, but in the sense that the void is the Source of all observers, the void observes everything in all holographic worlds. In the sense that the absolute nothingness of Brahman is the ultimate nature of God that creates all holographic worlds and is the Source of each presence of perceiving consciousness of Atman that perceives everything in its own holographic world from the central point of view of that world, God perceives everything in all holographic worlds.
Information Sharing Among Overlapping Bounding Surfaces of Space Creates the Appearance of a Consensual Reality Shared by Multiple Observers, Each Present at the Central Point of View of its own Holographic World
The Nature of Delusion
As a final topic of discussion, it’s possible to scientifically discuss how delusion arises and the nature of the awakening process that allows one to break free of delusion. What exactly is meant by delusion? The answer is that the observer of its own holographic world, which is present as a spiritual presence of perceiving consciousness at the central point of view of its own holographic world, is identifying itself with the form of a person that appears in that holographic world. The nature of delusion is sort of like an observer out in a movie audience that identifies itself with an animated character that appears in the movie the observer is watching, as animated images of the movie are projected from the movie screen to the observer’s point of view out in the movie audience. This is delusional since the movie images are projected from a two dimensional movie screen while the observer out in the movie audience is in a higher dimension outside the screen as the observer observes those animated images. There can only be an illusion that the observer is an animated image that the observer perceives if the observer identifies itself with an image.
The observer, which is a spiritual presence of perceiving consciousness at the central point of view of its own holographic world, has its own inherent sense of being present or I-Am-ness as it perceives the projected and animated images of its own holographic world, but the observer mistakenly attributes its own sense of being present to the projected and animated image of the form of a person it perceives in that holographic world. In effect, the observer is saying: I am the projected and animated image of the form of a person I perceive in my own holographic world, which is obviously delusional. Why would the observer believe such a false and delusional belief about itself? The answer has to do with the nature of emotional personal self-identification.
It is simply not possible to discuss the nature of delusion or false personal self-identification without discussing emotions. Personal self-identification is inherently an emotional phenomena. The other thing to be clear about is where emotions come from. The expression of emotions is the expression of energy that animates the form of a person. Just as the form of that person is like an image that is projected to the observer’s point of view from its own holographic screen that can only arise as an event horizon in the observer’s own accelerated frame of reference, the expression of emotional energy that animates the form of the person also arises in the observer’s own accelerated frame of reference. That’s where the emotional energy comes from.
The other thing to be clear about is the purpose of emotional expressions. The only purpose of emotions is to defend body survival. The expression of emotions gives rise to the emotional energy that animates the form of a body. The essential nature of emotions is the expression of fear and desire, and the only purpose of emotional expressions is the defense of body survival.
The only scientific way to understand how the expression of emotions defends the survival of a body is with the second law of thermodynamics. A body is an emotionally animated form of information that we call a life-form. The second law of thermodynamics says that a life-form, which is a form of information that is self-replicated in form in a recognizable way as that form is animated, can only become self-replicated in form if its entropy decreases, which requires the entropy of the life-form and its environment to increase as the self-replicating form incorporates the organizing potential energy of attractive forces into its form while it also sheds disorganizing thermal energy into the environment. That is how all life-forms are self-replicated in form in a recognizable way. That’s what we call life, which inherently requires the life-form to eat potential energy and to shed thermal energy into its environment. The problem is, where can the life-form find the potential energy it needs to eat in order to self-replicate its form? The answer is it finds that potential energy in other life-forms. To self-replicate its form, the life-form must eat other life-forms while it also avoids being eaten by other life-forms. We call these survival behaviors emotional expressions of fear and desire, which are behaviors the life-form must express in order for its form to become self-replicated in form in a recognizable way.
The self-replication of a life-form in a recognizable way is described by computational rules that govern how information is organized into form. The problem is the nature of the perceiving consciousness that is recognizing that form cannot itself be described by computational rules. That kind of scientific description would create a logically inconsistent paradox of self-reference. All meaning is given when perceiving consciousness recognizes a form of information that is self-replicated in form in a recognizable way. The problem of recognition and giving meaning is not a scientific problem since the nature of recognition can never be reduced to computational rules. Recognition and the giving of meaning is inherent to perceiving consciousness and can never be described scientifically since its true nature cannot be reduced to computational rules.
When perceiving consciousness recognizes itself to be the life-form it perceives, it gives that life-form the meaning of self-identity. By giving meaning to the life-form, perceiving consciousness identifies itself with the life-form. That is the nature of its self-recognition. The problem is self-identification is only a false belief that perceiving consciousness believes about itself. Perceiving consciousness believes itself to be the life-form that it perceives. This self-recognition is always emotionally driven by expressions of fear and desire.
All perceivable self-concepts are created in a subject-object relation of an observer observing some observable thing. In psychological terms, this subject-object relation defines self and other. The true nature of the subject can only be understood as perceiving consciousness, while the nature of the object is whatever is being observed, which modern physics tells us is a form of information. A self-concept is just another perceivable thing that is being observed. As the perceiving consciousness itself, the subject is nothing perceivable. This tells us no self-concept is true. All perceivable self-concepts are false beliefs the perceiving subject believes about itself.
Self-identification of perceiving consciousness with the life-form it perceives can only be driven by the expression of emotional energy that makes perceiving consciousness feel self-limited to the emotionally animated form of that life-form as it perceives the flow of emotional energy that animates that life-form. That expression of emotional energy is what creates the false belief that perceiving consciousness believes about itself that it is the life-form it perceives. In reality, perceiving consciousness is nothing perceivable. The true nature of perceiving consciousness can only be described in the sense of negation as the formless nothingness of pure consciousness. Nothing perceiving consciousness can believe about itself is true since it is nothing perceivable.
Bodies can only hold together and self-replicate their forms in a recognizable way due to the emotional expressions of fear and desire that hold them together, but we might ask why these self-limiting emotional expressions arise in a body in the first place? Biology has pretty much answered this question with the idea of environmental selection pressures and the survival of the fittest body. A body only appears to survive in the world if its form is self-replicated in form in a recognizable way over a sequence of events that arise in the flow of emotional energy that animates the body. It turns out that for a variety of reasons that have to do with the balance between potential and kinetic energy that a body can only self-replicate its form if attractive potential energy is added to the body. The addition of attractive potential energy to a body alters the balance between the tendency for random disorganization of form to occur, which physicists call an increase in entropy, and the tendency for coherent organization of form to occur, which can either be understood in terms of the attractive forces that hold forms together or quantum entanglement of the bits of information inherent in those coherently organized forms. At the level of physics, either attractive forces have to hold forms together or quantum entanglement of information has to be at play to result in the coherent organization of information inside forms. Entangled bits of information naturally tend to align together over a sequence of perceivable events, which results in the coherent organization of information inside forms. The potential energy of attractive forces that hold forms together is an inherent aspect of this organization.
The upshot is the form of a body is only self-replicated in form in a recognizable way if potential energy is added to that form. We call the addition of potential energy to a body the process of eating. The big question is where can a body find the potential energy that it needs to eat in order to self-replicate its form and survive in the world? The answer is that potential energy is found in other bodies. This is the fundamental reason why bodies can only survive in the world if they eat other bodies. Bodies must eat other bodies so that they can add potential energy to their forms, which allows that form to become self-replicated in form in a recognizable way. Even plants must eat the photons that arrive from the sun in order to self-replicate their forms.
As previously stated, there is always a balance between the tendency for entropy to increase and the flow of random kinetic energy to disorganize the form of the body and the tendency for the potential energy of attractive forces to hold the form of the body together and maintain that coherent organization of information. If the balance favors an increase in entropy and the flow of random kinetic energy, the body falls apart and becomes disorganized. If the balance favors the potential energy of attractive forces, the body holds together as its form becomes self-replicated in form and that coherent organization of form is maintained. The only way this second scenario can occur is if the body adds potential energy to its form, which requires the body to eat other bodies. A body can only self-replicate its form and survive in the world if it eats other bodies.
Bodies only survive in the world because they eat other bodies. There is a natural selection pressure called the survival of the fittest body that basically says that those bodies that are best able to eat other bodies and avoid being eaten by other bodies are the bodies that are most likely to self-replicate their forms and survive. Self-replication of form is always emotionally driven, since the survival of the fittest body is inherently dependent on emotional expressions by bodies. The coherent organization of information inside a body that allows for self-replication of form in a recognizable way inherently requires the coherent organization of the flow of emotional energy that allows for that self-replication of form as the form of the body is animated. The natural selection pressure of the survival of the fittest body tells us those bodies that are best able to eat other bodies and avoid being eaten by other bodies are the bodies most likely to survive and self-replicate their forms. This natural selection process is always emotionally driven by the expression of emotions that have no other purpose than the survival of the body. These survival emotions are expressed as the desire to eat and the fear of being eaten. The bodies that are best able to survive in the world are those bodies that are best able to express the desire to eat other bodies while they also express the fear of being eaten by other bodies.
The expression of fear and desire are primitive survival emotions necessary for the survival of a body in the world, but the human life-form is also a social animal, and the expression of social emotions also has survival value. The basic problem is that the human life-form is born in an immature state of development in which it is not able to fend for its own survival. The immature human child must be cared for by a caretaker, like its mother. The immature child is dependent on the care of its mother for its survival. This state of dependency leads to the formation of emotional attachments. The child becomes emotionally attached to its mother. The expression of emotional attachments are social emotions necessary for the survival of the immature child. By their very nature, the expression of emotional attachments are immature. Just like the primitive survival emotions of fear and desire, the expression of emotional attachments is also selected for by natural selection in the sense of the survival of the fittest body. The immature body of a child is more likely to survive if it forms an emotional attachment with its mother. The expression of social emotions in the form of emotional attachments is always an immature expression that arises from the dependency of the immature child on its caretakers to insure its body survival.
Living an embodied life in the world is inherently a life that must be lived in conflict. This is not only the emotional conflict that one body expresses against other bodies as that body struggles to survive in a world where bodies must eat each other in order to survive, which gives rise to natural selection and the survival of the fittest body, but also the emotional conflict that occurs within each body as each body expresses the desire to eat other bodies, which is a movement toward, in conflict with the fear of being eaten, which is a movement away. Within each body an emotional conflict is expressed as movement toward, which is an expression of the desire to eat, in conflict with movement away, which is an expression of the fear of being eaten. Even the expression of anger, which is movement against, is in conflict with these expressions of fear and desire. There is no way to resolve emotional conflicts at the level of a body since these conflicts are the only way bodies can survive in the world and self-replicate and reproduce their forms.
The reason these unresolvable emotional conflicts are so important at the level of living an embodied life in the world is because these emotional conflicts are what underlie all the mentally constructed beliefs one has about oneself that one is a body living an embodied life in the world. The mentally constructed body-based self-concept is not only emotionally energized but is also in emotional conflict with itself. These emotional conflicts in large part are what create all the confusion that leads one to believe that one is an embodied person living a life in the world that one perceives. One believes the false belief that one is an embodied person living a life in that world. Unresolvable emotional conflicts are at the core of all the false beliefs people believe about themselves that they are bodies. Awakening from delusion is the process of disbelieving these false beliefs, but awakening can never occur at the same level that these false beliefs are created since the emotional conflicts that underlie them can never be resolved at that level.
People believe whatever they want to believe because that’s what they want to believe, which is another way of saying all beliefs are emotionally driven. All beliefs are mentally constructed in a subject-object relation as a personal self-concept is emotionally related to the concept of some other thing the subject perceives in its world. The self-concept is body-based, which is what makes all beliefs false, since the perceiving subject is identifying itself with the form of a body it perceives in its world. That personal self-identification is always emotionally driven, since the perceiving subject really feels self-limited to the emotionally animated form of that body as it perceives the flow of emotional energy that animates that body.
The holographic principle tells us that the perceiving subject can only be a point of perceiving consciousness that arises at the central point of view of its own holographic world in relation to its own surrounding holographic screen, and that every object that appears in the observer’s world, which is everything the subject can perceive in its world, is a form of information that is projected like an image from the screen to the observer’s central point of view and is animated in the flow of energy. Each projection of an image is like a screen output, and the animation occurs over a sequence of screen outputs. The whole thing is observer-dependent since the projection and animation of images can only arise in the observer’s own accelerated frame of reference, which is how an event horizon arises that acts as a holographic screen. Even the flow of energy that animates the animation can only arise in the observer’s own accelerated frame of reference. The problem is that a perceivable self-concept is just another animated form of information.
The true nature of the subject-object relation is an observer observing some observable thing, where the subject is a point of perceiving consciousness and the object is a projected form of information. When that form of information is self-replicated in form in a recognizable way as the form is emotionally animated, the observer recognizes itself in that form and identifies itself with that form. Emotional self-identification creates all the false beliefs the perceiving subject believes about itself, as the observer identifies itself with the form of a body-based self-concept that is emotionally related to the form of some other thing the observer perceives in its world.
That personal self-identification is always emotionally driven. The emotional expressions of fear and desire are all about defending the survival of the emotionally animated body. These kinds of survival-oriented emotional expressions are absolutely necessary in a world where bodies must engage in a struggle for survival for the simple reason that a body must eat other bodies while it also avoids being eaten by other bodies in order to self-replicate its form in a recognizable way. That is the nature of the survival of the fittest body. Natural selection will ensure that only the fittest bodies that are best able to express the desire to eat other bodies while they also express the fear of being eaten by other bodies will survive and self-replicate and reproduce their forms.
This brings us back to the question of why people believe whatever they want to believe. The answer is people believe what they want to believe because their beliefs are emotionally driven. Once the perceiving subject emotionally identifies itself with the emotionally animated form of a body it perceives, the perceiving subject feels emotionally compelled to defend the survival of that body as though its existence depends on it. That is the essential lie at the core of all false beliefs the perceiving subject believes about itself. The perceiving subject mistakenly believes that its existence depends on the survival of a body it perceives in its own perceivable world.
Body survival is always emotionally driven, which means all the mentally constructed beliefs the perceiving subject has and falsely believes about itself that it is a body in the world it perceives are emotionally driven. Bodies can only survive in the world if they express survival emotions. Those survival emotions are what emotionally energize all body-based self-concepts, which are all false beliefs the perceiving subject believes about itself. At the core of these false beliefs is the perceiving subject’s desire to survive in the world in the form of a body. People believe what they want to believe because at their core they want to survive in the world in the emotionally animated form of a body. They want to live an embodied life in the world, and the only way that embodied life is possible is if the survival emotions of fear and desire are expressed. That is why they express survival emotions and why they believe what they believe. The whole thing is based on the false beliefs they have about themselves that they are bodies. At their core, beliefs are about body survival. All beliefs are about defending the survival of a body-based self-concept, which itself is only a belief. That is the nature of all false beliefs the perceiving subject believes about itself when it emotionally identifies itself with the emotionally animated form of a body.
To be clear about things, the perceiving subject is only perceiving things through the organs of sensory perception of a body. Organs of sensory perception are only transmitting information about whatever is being perceived. Some of the perceptions are external sensory perceptions, like sight and sound, and some are internal sensory perceptions, like emotional body feelings. The observer is mistakenly dividing its world into internal and external based on the boundary of a body. The surface of the body creates a false division between self and other, where self is defined as internal to the body and other is defined as external to the body. The holographic principle tells us that in reality everything the observer can observe is external to itself. Every observable object the observer can observe is a form of information projected from its own holographic screen to its central point of view. The observer itself can only be understood as a point of perceiving consciousness at the center of its own holographic world. The observer only has a mistaken perception that a body-based self exists within its own holographic world.
In reality, the perceiving subject is not a body. The true spiritual nature of the perceiving subject is pure consciousness. Pure consciousness has no need for beliefs because it has no need for survival emotions. Pure consciousness does not survive in the world in the form of a body. The body is just another perceivable form of information that consciousness perceives in the world. The true spiritual nature of pure consciousness timelessly exists. It is the ultimate, underlying reality or ground of being that timelessly exists when everything else disappears from existence. Its true formless form is the formless nothingness of pure consciousness that timelessly exists.
In order to take this explanation further, it is necessary to make a distinction between individual will and divine will. Individual will arises when a spiritual presence of consciousness mistakenly identifies itself with the emotionally animated form of a body it perceives in its own perceivable world. The expression of individual will always reflects personal bias in the focus of attention of that presence of perceiving consciousness. Personal bias in the observer’s focus of attention on its world leads to the expression of personally biased emotions in that world. The expression of divine will is always unbiased as it has no personal bias.
Quantum State of Potentiality as a Sum Over All Possible Paths
In order to understand the nature of individual will and divine will, we need to make a short digression into the nature of quantum theory. Quantum theory tells us that every observable thing that can be observed in the world does not actually exist as an observable thing in that world. Instead, everything is included in a quantum state of potentiality. The quantum state of the world is like a sum or superposition of all possible observable states of the world. With any observation of an actual observable state of the world, that specific observable state must be chosen from the quantum state of potentiality that sums over all possible observable states of the world. This sum is usually expressed as a sum over all possible paths in some information configuration space, where each point along each of the paths corresponds to a possible observation of the world. In the sense of potentiality, different paths correspond to different possible observations of the world, where a choice must be made at each possible observation of the world about what to observe in the world and which path to follow through the world. Each point along some path is a decision point about what to observe in the world and which path to follow.
Quantum theory tells us each path is weighted with a probability amplitude that is the essence of the quantum wavefunction. The quantum wavefunction in turn depends on a quantity called the action, which is like a measure of the distance along that particular path in the information configuration space. The laws of physics enter into the quantum state in that they can always be expressed as an action principle. The laws of physics are inherent in the action that measures distance along the path. The most likely path in the sense of quantum probability is the path of least action, which is like the shortest possible distance between two points in the information configuration space, but there is an important caveat. The path of least action is only chosen as the most likely path if choices are made in an unbiased way. Physicists call unbiased choice random choice. In a very real sense, without unbiased choice, the laws of physics lose their predictability and the path of least action is no longer the most likely path. In terms of throwing dice, if there is bias in the way choices are made, the game is rigged and all bets are off.
This leads to a natural explanation of the difference between divine will and individual will. Divine will always makes its choices in an unbiased way. Individual will is always personally biased. Individual will can only arise when a presence of perceiving consciousness identifies itself with the form of a person it perceives in its world. That personal self-identification is always emotionally driven. The perceiving subject feels self-limited to the emotionally animated form of that person as it perceives the flow of emotional energy that animates that form. Once the perceiving subject emotionally identifies itself with that personal form, the focus of its attention becomes personally biased to defend the survival of that form as though its existence depends on it. With personal bias in the focus of its attention, choices are made in a personally biased way, which leads to the expression of more personally biased survival emotions.
Why does personal bias arise in the first place? The ultimate answer is natural selection and the survival of the fittest body, but the way natural selection expresses body survival is in terms of the pleasure-pain principle. Eating feels good while being eaten feels bad. The attention of consciousness naturally becomes focused on seeking pleasure and avoiding pain due to its preference to feel good rather than feel bad. This preference has survival value since feeling good, as in satisfying the desire to eat, promotes body survival, while feeling bad, as in being eaten, reduces the chances of body survival. The attention of consciousness naturally becomes directed to feel good rather than feel bad, which leads to personal bias in the way its attention is focused and to the expression of more personally biased survival emotions, like the desire to eat and the fear of being eaten. This has the effect of increasing the chances of body survival. This creates a vicious cycle. The more the attention of consciousness is focused in a personally biased way, the more personally biased survival emotions are expressed. The net result is to express the desire to live in the form of a body while also expressing the fear of body death.
Unbiased choices lead to the normal flow of things. The normal flow of things naturally arises in the flow of energy through the observer’s world as unbiased choices are made and things tend to follow the path of least action. Biased choices are always an interference with the normal flow of things. This interference creates an emotional disturbance in the normal flow of things as survival emotions are expressed in a distorted and amplified way, like an out-of-control positive feedback loop. This interference with the normal flow of things leads to distorted and amplified expressions of personally biased survival emotions that make the observer feel self-limited to the emotionally animated form of a person that expresses personally biased survival emotions. In a very real sense, the observer is distorting the flow of energy through its world as it expresses personally biased emotions. This is only possible because the emotional energy that underlies the expression of those emotions arises in the observer’s own accelerated frame of reference, but even that accelerated frame of reference can only arise in the normal flow of energy through the observer’s world. That normal flow of energy can only arise as an expression of divine will.
The only reason these personally biased choices can be made is because the quantum state of potentiality allows for the possibility of choice. The quantum state in turn is characterized by computational rules that we call the laws of physics. Where do these computational rules come from? The answer of course is the holographic principle. It is fairly easy to show that all the laws of physics can be deduced from the holographic principle. The law of gravity is described in relativity theory by Einstein’s field equations for the space-time metric, which can be deduced in a straightforward way from the holographic principle. The details of how this goes forward were explained earlier in this article. Once we can deduce Einstein’s field equations for gravity from the holographic principle, it’s possible to deduce all the quantum field theories of the standard model of particle physics from Einstein’s field equations. All the quantum fields of the standard model of particle physics naturally arise from Einstein’s field equations through the usual unification mechanisms of modern physics. The quantum fields of the electromagnetic and nuclear forces are understood to arise as extra components of the space-time metric with extra compactified dimensions of space. The quantum fields of all the matter particles arise with supersymmetry. This is explicitly demonstrated in M-theory, where 11-dimensional supergravity is understood as a low energy limit. It is therefore possible to deduce all the laws of physics or the computational rules that govern the behavior of the universe from the holographic principle.
Where does the holographic principle come from? We’ve already discussed that whenever an observer enters into an accelerated frame of reference an event horizon arises that acts as the observer’s holographic screen. The basic problem is to explain how bits of information are encoded on that screen. String theory and M-theory supply a possible answer, but it turns out that string theory is a special case of a more general kind of geometry called non-commutative geometry. Even fractal geometries can be understood as special cases of non-commutative geometry. Whenever non-commutative geometry is applied to an event horizon as a way to specify quantized position coordinates on the horizon, those quantized position coordinates are smeared out into area elements like pixels on a screen, and each pixel naturally encodes a quantized bit of information, which is called a qubit. At the most fundamental level, an event horizon only turns into a holographic screen because of non-commutative geometry. This is the most general geometric mechanism we scientifically know about that can explain how an event horizon turns into a holographic screen. This geometric mechanism fundamentally explains where all the computational rules come from that govern events in the observable universe.
This is a very nice scientific story, but who the hell chooses non-commutative geometry as the fundamental geometric mechanism that gives rise to the computational rules that govern events in the observable universe? Why should the observable universe be governed by computational rules? We’re back to the problem of divine will. In some mysterious way, divine will is making this choice. To say that the observable universe is governed by computational rules along the lines of the holographic principle is basically to say the observable universe is a virtual reality.
The observable universe is a virtual reality, just like the Matrix. This is really no different than the kind of computer-generated virtual reality that is displayed on a computer screen as animated images of that virtual reality are projected from the screen to the point of view of an observer that is playing the virtual reality game. In a metaphysical sense, we can say that the virtual reality game is an expression of divine will. Divine will is creating the virtual reality game.
The problem is the observer must be willing to play the game. If the observer is not willing to play the game, the game is over. If the observer refuses to play the game, the observer is out of the game. Playing the game means the observer must enter into an accelerated frame of reference, since that is the only way the observer’s holographic screen can arise as an event horizon. Playing the game means the observer must focus its attention on the game, since that is the only way the observer can make choices in the game. Playing the game means the observer must be present for the game, since that is the only way the observer can perceive the game. Being present for the game means the observer must focus its attention on the game.
To make things more interesting, the observer not only focuses its attention on the game, but also identifies itself with its character in the game. That kind of personal self-identification is what makes the game interesting in the sense of an observer appearing to live an embodied life in the world it perceives. With personal self-identification, the observer believes it is its character in the game it is playing. The problem is the observer’s self-identification with its character is only an emotionally energized false belief the observer believes about itself. That false belief can only arise with personal bias in the observer’s focus of attention that leads to the expression of personally biased survival emotions that defend the survival of the observer’s character in the virtual reality game as though the observer’s existence depends on it. The observer no longer knows what it really is. It mistakenly believes itself to be a character in the virtual reality game it is playing rather than the perceiving subject outside the game that is only playing the game.
Spiritual enlightenment, also called awakening from delusion or truth realization, is the end result of the observer getting out of the game. The observer gets out of the game when the observer refuses to focus its attention on the game and refuses to be present for the game. When the observer is no longer present to perceive the game, the game disappears from existence from the observer’s own point of view. The game only exists in an unobserved state of potentiality until the observer observes it. The observer must be present to perceive the game for the game to appear to come into existence. When the observer is not present to perceive the game, the game disappears from existence from the observer’s own point of view. Everything disappears from existence since everything is a part of the game. What is creating and perceiving the game is not a part of the game. When everything disappears from existence, only the absolute nothingness of the void remains. In this ultimate state of absolute nothingness in which nothing is observed, the individual being of the observer dissolves back into its Source of undivided being like a drop of water dissolves back into the ocean. This oceanic experience is called spiritual enlightenment.
The process of becoming enlightened goes forward in progressive steps, just like a journey that one makes. Spiritual enlightenment is called awakening from delusion since the process is like awakening from a dream. When one believes oneself to be something that one can perceive in a dream that one is dreaming, that false belief is delusional. One’s true nature is the dreamer, not a dream character. When one awakens from one’s dream, the entire dream and everything in the dream disappears from existence from one’s own point of view and only one’s true nature remains. That true nature is the undivided formless nothingness of pure consciousness.
Prior to awakening from the dream, the usual path one takes is to awaken within the dream, sort of like lucid dreaming. When one awakens within the dream, one can only know oneself to be a spiritual presence of perceiving consciousness at the central point of view of the world one perceives, like an observer in a movie audience that only watches as animated images of the movie are projected from a movie screen to one’s point of view out in the audience. One can only know oneself in terms of one’s own sense of being present as one perceives that world. When one detaches oneself from that world, one knows oneself to be out in the audience. One knows oneself to be a non-identified detached witness of things. One is no longer in the movie. One has come out of the movie. One was never really in the movie. One only falsely believed oneself to be a part of the movie when one identified oneself with one’s character in the movie. In reality, one is only watching the movie from one’s point of view in the audience outside the movie. One awakens within the dream when one knows oneself not to be a part of the dream. One knows oneself to be a non-identified detached witness of the dream, which is the spiritual presence of perceiving consciousness at the central point of view of its own perceivable world.
This process of awakening within the dream is only possible if one surrenders to divine will and detaches oneself from things. When one surrenders to divine will, one gives up one’s personally biased desire to control things in a self-defensive way. Jed McKenna calls surrender the willingness to relinquish the illusion of control. One stops resisting the normal flow of things. The normal flow of things arises in the flow of energy through one’s world as an expression of unbiased divine will. The expression of personally biased individual will always reflects personal bias in the focus of one’s attention. There is no personal bias in the expression of divine will. All expressions of personally biased individual will can only interfere with the normal flow of things. All attempts to control things in a personally biased self-defensive way can only create an emotional disturbance in the normal flow of things. All feelings of personal self-limitation that one perceives can only arise from that emotional disturbance in the normal flow of things. Without that emotional disturbance, only feelings of connection are perceived.
When one surrenders to divine will, one puts one’s trust in the normal flow of things to sort out what is for the best. One accepts things as they are every moment with no desire that things be any different than they are in the moment. One accepts what is as it is every moment. One does not fearfully anticipate the future or regretfully remember the past. All desires for future achievements and resentments about past events come to an end. One’s attention is only focused on the present moment. The present moment is the only place that one can ever find oneself as a presence of consciousness when one’s attention is focused on one’s own sense of being present.
When one detaches oneself from things, one’s personal self-identification dies away. As one severs one’s emotional attachments to things, one stops identifying oneself with the emotionally animated form of a person that appears in the world one perceives. Severing an emotional attachment always feels like something dies inside since one’s personal self-concept can only become mentally constructed through the expression of emotional attachments. As one severs emotional attachments, one’s personal self-concept or ego-structure dies away. Detaching oneself from things can only go forward in a state of surrender, since one must become willing to die at the level of ego-death. As long as one is defending one’s self-concept as though one’s existence depends on its survival, one will not surrender or detach oneself from things. When one sees that one’s ego-structure or personal self-concept is only a false belief that one believes about oneself, one becomes willing to suffer ego-death rather than continue to live the life of a lie. Jed McKenna calls this part of the awakening process ego-death as a means to no-self.
Self-defensive expressions are often in conflict with the desire to attach oneself to things. For example, the desire to feel close to another may be in conflict with the fear of being controlled by the other. Emotional conflicts are unresolvable at the same level that they’re being created, just as the desire to eat can be in conflict with the fear being eaten. There is no way to resolve the conflict between the desire to move toward another and the desire to move away from another at the level of movement. Emotional conflicts create all the confusion in the world that leads to identity confusion. The only way to resolve this identity confusion is to see things from a higher level. As one detaches oneself from things, which is the self-destructive process of ego-death, one sees things from a higher level of consciousness, but then one only knows oneself to be a non-identified detached witness of things. One has come out of the world of things that one perceives and is no longer a thing. That is the only real way to resolve the identity confusion. When one knows that one is not-a-thing in the world one perceives, one is no longer confused about the true nature of one’s identity. One can only identify oneself with that nothingness. The only true freedom that one can ever have in the world is when one’s self-concept dies away.
Surrender is the willingness to give up the desire to control things. Underlying the desire to control things is the expression of the fear of things, which is a self-defensive emotional response. Detachment is the willingness to let go and let things come and go. Underlying all emotional attachments is the expression of the desire to possess things. Expressions of fear and desire have as their only purpose the defense of body survival. Personal self-identification is always body-based and emotionally driven. All personal self-concepts are emotionally energized. Emotional expressions are what makes one feel self-limited to the emotionally animated form of a person as one perceives that flow of animating emotional energy, which leads to personal self-identification. Emotional expressions occur naturally whenever bodies engage in a struggle for survival, but with personal bias in the focus of one’s attention, personally biased emotional responses become distorted and amplified, which perpetuates personal self-identification.
The basic problem of self-identification is the perceiving subjective Self emotionally identifies itself with its perceivable objective self-concept. Once self-identified, the subjective Self feels compelled to defend the survival of its objective self-concept as though its existence depends on it, which it does by expressing self-defensive emotions that perpetuate its self-identification with its self-concept. It feels self-limited to the emotionally animated form of its self-concept as it perceives the flow of emotional energy animating its self-concept. The only way it can break this vicious cycle is if it surrenders, which means it stops expressing self-defensive emotions. The only way it will stop expressing self-defensive emotions is if it sees the true nature of what it is.
When the Self sees the true nature of what it really is, it sees that it really has nothing to defend. This becomes possible when it looks within into the emptiness of its own being and sees that it is a pure presence of perceiving consciousness at the center of its own world with its own sense of beingness and presence that has nothing to defend. It sees that all its acts of self-defense are acts of futility since it is only defending the survival of an illusion of what it is and that illusion will not ultimately survive, while the true nature of its being can never cease to exist. Once it surrenders, it feels connected to all things and naturally puts its trust in the normal flow of things to sort out what is for the best. It naturally accepts everything as it is each moment with no desire that anything be any different than it is in the moment. By surrendering, it loses its bias in the focus of its attention. It can only know itself as a non-identified detached witness of things it perceives in its world. With detachment, it sees all things with a sense of distance from them from a higher level of consciousness. It puts some space around itself and breaks its emotional attachment to things. Its self-identification with its personal self-concept snaps. It no longer has an ego or personal body-based self-concept. When its ego is not, when there is no longer any personal bias in its focus of attention, when the expression of self-defensive personally biased emotions comes to an end, when it gives up its desire to control things in a fearful personally biased and self-defensive way, when it stops fighting and resisting the normal flow of things and allows itself to come into alignment with the normal flow of things, that state of nonresistance and acceptance that follows from recognition of what it really is, is its surrender.
You cannot surrender. Surrender isn’t something that you can do. Your desire to do things is the problem. Everything you can do is an expression of your personally biased individual will. When you surrender, you do nothing. When you surrender to divine will, you just allow things to play out in the normal way. You simply watch as things play out with no personal bias in the focus of your attention. You become willing to do nothing. That’s what it means to surrender to divine will. You give up your desire to do things. You stop doing things. You stop interfering with the normal flow of things, stop defending yourself, and stop fighting, resisting and trying to control things in a personally biased way. You accept things as they are each moment with no desire that things be any different than they are in the moment. You allow the animating flow of energy through your body to come into alignment with the normal flow of things. You allow yourself to be carried along by the normal flow of things. You enter into a deep state of let-go. That’s the only way you can come into alignment and feel connected rather than disconnected.
Jed McKenna refers to this state of connectedness that arises from one’s surrender to divine will as the integrated state. In the integrated state, one not only feels connected to all things as the flow of energy through one’s body comes into alignment with the normal flow of things through one’s world, but one also expresses right actions and experiences expressions of creativity. The integrated state is also characterized by the born-again experience, in which one dies in identity to the form of one’s own body and is reborn in identity to the spirit. One knows oneself to be a spiritual presence of perceiving consciousness at the center of one’s own perceivable world.
The awakening process is only about breaking the hypnotic spell of self-identification. It is the perceiving consciousness of the Self, which is the observer at the center of its own world, that emotionally identifies itself with its perceivable body-based self-concept. The observer is the perceiving subject and its self-concept is the perceivable object. This subject-object relation normally defines self and other, but with the twisted nature of self-identification, the perceiving subject identifies itself with its objective self-concept. To be clear about things, the true subjective nature of the observer is only a point of perceiving consciousness at the center of its own holographic world and the nature of all perceivable objects in that world are forms of information projected like images from the observer’s holographic screen to its central point of view. This hypnotic spell of self-identification is emotionally driven in that the observer really feels self-limited to the emotionally animated form of its body-based self-concept as it perceives the flow of emotional energy that animates that personal form. The observer itself is creating that emotional energy in its own accelerated frame of reference through the expression of fear and desire, which are the personally biased emotions that perpetuate its self-identification.
The observer creates this personally biased emotional expression through personal bias in the focus of its attention. These are personally biased survival emotions that defend the survival of the observer’s body as though the observer’s existence depends on it. That is the lie at the core of all self-identification. The observer falsely believes that its existence depends on the survival of its body that appears in the world it perceives. That false belief is what allows the observer to live an apparent embodied life in that world. The observer itself must create these false beliefs through expressions of fear and desire, which it does in its own accelerated frame of reference. That motion is the spirit of God moving over the face of deep, which is how the observer’s world is created, but in that process of creation, the observer emotionally creates all the false beliefs it believes about itself. The false beliefs that the observer believes about itself are its emotionally energized self-concepts, which is how the hypnotic spell of self-identification is perpetuated. The observer no longer knows itself to be the spirit of God, but instead falsely believes itself to be an emotionally animated body that appears in the world it perceives. The observer believes these false beliefs about itself because it is emotionally creating those false beliefs about itself through its expression of fear and desire, which is what makes the whole delusional thing feel real.
Awakening within the dream is only possible if these personally biased emotional expressions are seen for what they really are and one loses interest in expressing them. One has to see for oneself that the only thing these emotional expressions accomplish is to perpetuate personal self-identification, which is the essential problem of falsely believing that one is a person in the world one perceives. Emotional expressions are what creates that false belief that one believes about oneself. The only way that false belief can come to an end is if one stops believing it and one stops emotionally energizing it. The expression of personally biased emotions only reflects personal bias in the focus of one’s attention. The only way one can awaken within the dream is if one loses that personal bias in the focus of one’s attention. That is only possible through one’s willingness to surrender to divine will and emotionally detach oneself from things. One must become willing to give up and let go. Awakening is not about gaining anything, but is only about losing things. Ultimately, everything is lost and nothing is gained. Every step forward in the awakening process is a loss. As long as there is more to lose, there are more steps to take. The essential nature of moving forward is the willingness to give up and let go. Ultimately, one only becomes willing to lose everything when one sees that everything one has is an illusion.
As one detaches oneself from things, one sees things from a higher level with a sense of distance and detachment, like a movie that one is watching from one’s point of view in the movie audience. Things are seen to be no more real than the animated images of a movie projected from a movie screen to one’s point of view out in the audience. One only knows oneself to be a non-identified detached witness of things. One is no longer inside the movie but is outside in the audience. The person one perceives with its emotional reactions is just another character in the movie that one is watching. One no longer emotionally attaches oneself to the character and no longer emotionally identifies oneself with the character. This state of emotional detachment and non-identification is the essence of awakening within the dream. One is no longer a part of the dream. One has come out of the dream. One knows oneself to be a detached witness of things.
Awakening from the dream follows awakening within the dream. When one sees the dream to be an illusion of what one really is, one naturally loses interest in paying attention to an illusion. One stops caring about what appears to happen in the illusion and one withdraws one’s focus of attention away from the illusion. The only other place one can focus one’s attention is on one’s own sense of being present. As one shifts the focus of one’s attention onto one’s own sense of being present as a presence of consciousness, one looks within into the emptiness of one’s own being. As one stabilizes one’s focus of attention on one’s own sense of being present, one is being present for one’s own beingness. One is being with the emptiness of one’s own being.
Something strange happens when one withdraws one’s attention away from the illusion. The illusion disappears from existence. The illusion only consists of images and is no more real than a movie one is watching as animated images of the movie are projected from a screen to one’s point of view in the audience. The images of the movie are only projected to one’s point of view when one is present to perceive them as one focuses one’s attention on them. In terms of the holographic principle, the images of the movie are forms of information that can only become projected from the screen to one’s point of view when one focuses one’s attention on them. When one is not present to perceive them, the images disappear from existence. Even stranger, the images of the movie are only animated in the flow of energy as one focuses one’s attention on them. The images are only animated in the flow of energy when one is present to perceive them. One must be present to perceive the images and focus one’s attention on the images for the images to become projected from the screen and become animated in the flow of energy.
When one is no longer present to perceive the images and withdraws one’s focus of attention away from the screen, the images are no longer projected from the screen and are no longer animated in the flow of energy. When one sees the images to be an illusion and loses interest in paying attention to an illusion, one naturally withdraws one’s attention away from the illusion. By withdrawing the focus of one’s attention away from the illusion, one is also withdrawing one’s investment of emotional energy in the illusion. The emotional energy that animates the illusion can only arise when one is present to perceive the illusion and focuses one’s attention on the illusion. When one loses interest in the illusion and stops paying attention to the illusion, the expression of that emotional energy comes to an end. When the expression of all energy that animates one’s world comes to an end, that world is no longer animated and comes to an end. That energy is only expressed in one’s own accelerated frame of reference and comes to an end in a freely falling frame of reference. In an ultimate state of freefall, one has no holographic screen and no images of one’s holographic world can become projected or animated.
When one totally withdraws one’s attention away from the world one perceives and is no longer present to perceive that world, the images of that world are no longer projected or animated and the appearance of that world must come to an end. When one focuses one’s attention on one’s own sense of being present while that holographic world disappears from existence, one enters into an ultimate state of freefall. This experience is described as falling into the void. As long as one is present for one’s own beingness, one will remain conscious of oneself as one falls into the void. At this point something wonderful happens. One’s individual consciousness dissolves back into its Source of pure undivided consciousness like a drop of water dissolves back into the ocean. In this ultimate state of dissolution, consciousness timelessly knows itself to be the undivided and unlimited formless nothingness of pure consciousness. That is the true nature of what it really is. That absolute nothingness is the true nature of the dreamer’s underlying reality that remains when the dreamer awakens from its dream and its dream disappears from existence.
In the sense that one’s awakening is a journey that one makes, one has to start somewhere with the first step. As the Tao says, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Seeing that one’s own ego structure is an illusion of what one really is can be that first step. Looking within and focusing attention on one’s own sense of beingness and presence can also be that first step. In the first case, one is experiencing disillusionment, and in the second case, one is looking within for the truth of what one really is. There are many more steps one must take to reach the final destination of one’s journey, but one has to start the journey by taking the first step.
One can only move forward in the journey through a process of detaching oneself from things, and that detachment process can only go forward in a state of surrender to divine will. Severing an emotional attachment is a painful experience due to the resistance one feels when one tries to detach oneself. That resistance arises from one’s unwillingness to let go and the desire to control things. The desire to control things leads to feelings of frustration when things can’t be controlled, which leads to the expression of anger, and those feelings of anger and frustration are painful. Once one becomes willing to let go and give up the desire to control things, the pain is gone. Giving up and letting go is how one detaches oneself from things. After one detaches oneself from things, there is no more pain because one has become desireless and wants nothing.
This detachment process in which one ultimately becomes desireless is the only way one’s ego can be deconstructed. The ego is only a bundle of fears and desires held together by emotional attachments and defended by the desire to control things. That bundle of fears and desires creates all memories of past experiences and anticipation of future experiences. By remembering the past, the ego is always looking to defend itself in the future. The ego is really nothing more than a presence of consciousness that emotionally identifies itself with this bundle of fears and desires. This bundle of fears and desires is self-limited to the form of a person. This emotional energy animates the behaviors of that personal form, which is called a body. By its nature, personal self-identification is body-based. This bundle of fears and desires is deconstructed and that body-based self-identification comes to an end when one severs emotional attachments and gives up the desire to control things. This is inherently a process of giving up and letting go. Once one’s ego is deconstructed, one’s attention naturally becomes refocused on the present moment, which is the only place that one can ever find oneself as a pure presence of perceiving consciousness with its own inherent sense of beingness and presence.
The essential problem of awakening is the ego. The ego is the obstruction that prevents one from moving forward in one’s journey of awakening. The only way one can move forward in that journey is to remove the obstruction. The hydra-head ganglion structure of the ego must be deconstructed before one can awaken, and the only way one can do that is through a painful process of detaching oneself from things. This is a painful process because detaching oneself is a kind of death. Severing an emotional attachment feels like something dies inside, and that never feels good. This painful process of detaching oneself is the only way to die at the level of ego-death. Every step along the way is a painful death. One has to come to hate one’s ego so much that one would rather die at the level of ego-death than continue to live the life of a lie. This can only happen when one clearly sees the falseness of one’s own ego. Detaching oneself from things only becomes a real possibility when one sees that everything one attaches oneself to is an illusion with the ego at the center of that illusion. Until that ego center is destroyed, it is not really possible to become aware of oneself at the true center of Atmanic consciousness.
Only after one reaches the true center can one experience Brahmanic consciousness, which has no center and has no boundary. The experience of Brahmanic consciousness has no self because it has no other. There can be no experience of an observer observing some observable thing in a subject-object relation of self and other in Brahmanic consciousness since nothing is perceived, and yet this undivided consciousness is aware of its true nature in an unlimited and unchanging way. This is the mystery of existence that can never be conceptualized except in terms of negation. The idea of one’s own self-realization is only applicable at the level of Atmanic consciousness, which is a necessary step one takes along the way to the experience of Brahmanic consciousness. At the level of Brahmanic consciousness, there is no self to realize, only truth.
In a very real sense, the mind is like a computer, and the intellect of the mind is like the software programs that run the computer. This software is only a collection of computational rules. The purpose of the mind’s intellect is purely survival, as in defending the survival of the personal form of a body. Survival behaviors are highly instinctual and are evolutionarily determined by natural selection in terms of the survival of the fittest body. The essential nature of survival behaviors are emotional responses like fear and desire that defend the survival of the body in the sense of the self-replication and the reproduction of the form of the body.
The mind’s memory is like the state of information stored inside the computer. The computer encodes bits of information and stores this information in specific information configuration states, which constitute memory. The software programs, which are the computation rules, operate on these stored configuration states of memory. In terms of the mind, this memory is largely genetically determined. Just as the survival behaviors of emotions are instinctual, memory is mostly evolutionarily determined through genetics.
The next level of mind is identity. Personal identity is constructed as a body-based self-concept. To continue the computer analogy, personal identity is like a personal self-image displayed on the computer screen. The computer screen is the information output device of the computer, but to whom is this information being outputted? Who is using the data?
Consciousness is the observer of the computer screen that is using the data being outputted by the computer. The essential thing to realize is consciousness is not part of the computer. Consciousness is outside the computer screen, only observing the images projected from the computer screen as it uses the outputted data. In the sense the mind is only a computer, consciousness is not really a part of the mind. Consciousness only takes itself to be a part of the mind when it identifies itself with the personal self-image it perceives as projected from the computer screen to its point of view outside the screen. Personal self-identification is emotionally driven. The only way consciousness can identify itself with the personal self-image it perceives is if it feels emotionally self-limited to that emotionally animated personal form.
With personal self-identification, the mind-computer is using consciousness for its own purposes rather than consciousness using the mind for its own purposes. The purpose of the mind is the survival of the body. This purpose is evolutionarily determined by natural selection in terms of the survival of the fittest body. The expression of instinctual survival emotions like fear and desire are all about defending the survival of the body, and genetic memory has no other purpose than to promote this survival behavior. The mind is using consciousness for its own purposes when consciousness emotionally identifies itself with the personal form of a projected self-image and feels compelled to defend the survival of that projected self-image as though its existence depends on it. Personal self-identification is what gives rise to all expressions of personal self-defense. All the man-made problems of the world are created through this process of emotional self-identification that leads to expressions of personal self-defense.
A spiritual path only begins when consciousness begins to use the mind-computer for its own purposes rather than the other way around. The essential problem of the spiritual path is for consciousness to stop identifying itself with the personal form of the self-image it perceives that is projected from the computer screen to its point of view outside the screen. Consciousness must create some space for itself and put some distance between itself and what it is perceiving. Consciousness itself is the perceiving subject outside the computer screen. All the objects that consciousness perceives are only images projected from the screen.
When consciousness creates some space for itself and puts some distance between itself and whatever it perceives, consciousness is following a spiritual path and is using the mind for its own purposes rather than the other way around. The objects consciousness perceives include the personal self-concept. When consciousness puts enough distance between itself and that perceivable self-concept, its personal self-identification with that self-concept snaps. When consciousness creates enough space between itself and that self-concept, the emotional link between itself and its personal self-concept is broken. Breaking the emotional link is the process of detaching oneself from one’s self-concept. Once consciousness no longer identifies itself with that personal self-concept, it is able to use the mind-computer for its own purposes, which are always expansive and exploratory rather than self-aggrandizing and self-defensive.
Once consciousness puts some distance and space between itself and whatever it perceives, consciousness comes to know its true spiritual nature and comes to peace with itself. This peacefulness or restfulness can only be described in terms of stillness and silence. The space within which this stillness and silence arises can only be described as emptiness. In the book of Psalms, this experience is described as Be still and know that I Am. Consciousness itself is what is called I Am, and that stillness is consciousness at peace with itself. This awareness that consciousness comes to know about itself in the sense of its own beingness and presence is the nature of following a spiritual path. When consciousness is at peace with itself, it naturally partakes of a more peaceful world. This only becomes possible when consciousness creates some space around itself and sees that world with a sense of distance, which allows itself to know its true spiritual nature. This is the essence of the spiritual wisdom of all spiritual teachings.
Modern physics has hit the wall between what is knowable and what is unknowable. That wall is a holographic screen. Whenever one has a self to defend, one builds a self-protective wall around oneself. The nature of that self-protective wall is a holographic screen. All self-protective walls eventually turn into prisons, and then one needs a door so that one can escape. The essential nature of the doorway that lets one out of the prison of self is the observer of the screen.
William Blake describes this doorway as the doors of perception. Only when this doorway is cleansed of all sense of self can one escape and know one’s true nature, which is infinite. This doorway that lets one out of the prison of self is the nature of the perceiving consciousness of the observer, which is also called I Am or the Self. It is the Self itself that must be cleansed of all sense of self before the doorway will open. In Zen, this open doorway is referred to as the gateless gate. The Self is the gate that only opens when the Self becomes selfless.
Nisargadatta Maharaj describes this process of the Self becoming selfless as: The door that locks you in is also the door that lets you out. I Am is the door. Stay with it until it opens. It is always open, but you are not at it. Being at the doorway means being present for one’s own sense of beingness. One only becomes selfless when one knows oneself to only be a pure presence of perceiving consciousness with its own sense of beingness and presence.
God does not know that you exist. Only you know that you exist. That self-knowledge is the essence of the problem. The One God is a metaphor for the undivided and unlimited formless nothingness of pure consciousness. That is the ultimate nature of existence. At the ground level of the ultimate nature of existence, nothing is known because that nothingness is what ultimately exists. That formless nothingness is selfless and has no sense of self. The sense of self can only arise when the perceiving consciousness of the Self is divided from that undivided nothingness. Only the Self knows I Am. Only the Self knows it exists as a divided presence of perceiving consciousness that perceives things in its own holographic world in a subject-object relation of self and other. Only when the Self is cleansed of all sense of self can the doors of perception open and the Self reunite itself with the formless nothingness of pure consciousness. In that ultimate reunion, there is no self, only absolute nothingness. In that ultimate state of reunion, the Self does not exist. Only the formless nothingness of pure consciousness exists.
Spiritual enlightenment is only about experiencing this ultimate level of existence, which only becomes possible when one becomes selfless. The Self itself is the gate that prevents one from becoming enlightened when one has a personal self-concept. That personal self-concept is always energized by the expression of personal desires that can only arise as one emotionally attaches oneself to things in the world one perceives. One can only become selfless when one detaches oneself from things. One can only become desireless as one severs one’s emotional attachments to things. When one withdraws one’s attention away from the world one perceives, one becomes desireless as one withdraws one’s investment of emotional energy in that world.
This naturally happens when one sees that world to be an illusion and one loses interest in paying attention to an illusion. In this desireless state, one naturally shifts the focus of one’s attention onto one’s own sense of being present as a pure presence of consciousness at the center of that world. The only way the doorway of self can open and one can escape from the prison of self is when one focuses one’s attention on one’s own sense of being present while one remains in this desireless state. This open doorway is experienced as falling into the void. Only in an ultimate state of freefall can the perceiving consciousness of the divided Self reunite itself with and dissolve into the undivided formless nothingness of pure consciousness. That is the only way one can know the truth of what one really is and experience the mystery of existence.
Becoming selfless is the same as becoming desireless. The expression of desire requires the expression of energy, which requires accelerated motion. It is the observer itself that expresses this energy in its own accelerated frame of reference. In an ultimate state of freefall, that expression of energy comes to an end. In that ultimate state, one has no holographic screen and one’s holographic world disappears from existence. Becoming selfless and desireless in the state in which one enters into an ultimate state of freefall is experienced as falling into the void.
You cannot exist without desire. The individual being that you call you can only exist in a state of duality as you perceive things, but your perception of things requires your expression of desire. When you stop expressing desire, you do not exist. When you become desireless, you perceive nothing. In that desireless state in which nothing is perceived, your individual being dissolves into the nothingness of undivided being like a drop of water dissolves into the ocean. You no longer exist as an individual being. You become the ocean of undivided being. You become one.
You cannot experience nonduality from duality. The nature of duality is an observer observing some observable thing in a subject-object relation of self and other. By its very nature, the observer’s perception of things is dualistic. The only way you can experience nonduality is to leave duality behind. You have to become willing to leave duality behind and perceive nothing. The irony is that when you leave duality behind and perceive nothing, you also leave you behind. There is no you in nonduality. There is no self and other in nonduality.
The essential instruction for awakening is to withdraw one’s attention away from the world one perceives and shift the focus of one’s attention onto one’s own sense of being present as a pure presence of perceiving consciousness at the center of that world. One has to be present for one’s own beingness. One has to look deeply into the emptiness of one’s own being. If one looks deeply enough into the emptiness of one’s own being for long enough, one eventually will fall into the void and experience nonduality by perceiving nothing. The nature of perceiving nothing is to be nothing. To be nothing, one has to become willing to do nothing and want nothing. One has to become desireless, but without desire, there is no you. The individual being that you call you can only exist in a state of duality as you perceive things. The perception of things requires the expression of desire. When you become desireless, you do not exist. When you perceive nothing, your individual being dissolves into the nothingness of undivided being like a drop of water dissolves into the ocean. You no longer exist as an individual being. You become the ocean of undivided being. When you dissolve, you become one. That oneness is the ultimate truth.
At every level of awakening there is stillness and silence, which becomes deeper as one looks deeper into the emptiness of one’s own being, until one is absorbed into the ultimate stillness and silence of emptiness and nothingness. Stillness and silence are not something that one can actively achieve by the force of one’s own personal will. One’s personally biased will is the problem that arises when one emotionally identifies oneself with the form of a person and feels compelled to defend the survival of that personal form as though one’s existence depends on it. Personal bias in the focus of one’s attention and expression of the personally biased emotions of fear and desire only arise when one feels emotionally self-limited to a personal form. Stillness and silence are what one discovers about oneself when one surrenders to divine will. One doesn’t have to do anything except to allow oneself to discover the stillness and silence inherent in the emptiness of one’s own being that is a natural aspect of one’s own awareness as a pure presence of consciousness. One doesn’t have to do anything to discover stillness and silence except to surrender to divine will, give up one’s desire to control things in a self-defensive personally biased way, let go and detach oneself from things. One only has to give up and let go.
In the Christian mystical tradition, the first level of awakening is called mystical union of the self with God, which is understood to be a consequence of surrender to God’s will. There’s a nice book by the Christian mystic Bernadette Roberts called The Experience of No-Self, where she describes going beyond this kind of mystical union of self with God into a state where either the Self is awake within the dream, or full awakening from the dream, which she calls No-self. She understands the experience of No-self along the lines of how Meister Eckhart wrote about this experience as absorption of the Self into the Oneness of the Godhead, which in the sense of Nirvana is the extinction of the flame of life as a way to dissolve into the oneness of the Source. Extinguishing the flame of life is the same as turning off the light of consciousness, which is the only way the individual being of the Self can dissolve into the darkness of the Source. In this final dissolution into undivided and unlimited nothingness, Atman (the Self or individual spirit) becomes one with Brahman (the Supreme spirit), not in the sense of a mystical union of the Self with God, but at the ultimate existential level of existence, which is undivided oneness.
What is the value of all these concepts? Like a roadmap, one needs a map before one makes a journey so that one knows where one is going and in which direction to travel. One needs a plan of action before one can put that action into effect. The value isn’t in the plan of action, which is only a bunch of concepts, but in the action that results in the desired effect. The value isn’t in the roadmap, but in arriving at the final destination of the journey. Like the Cheshire cat tells Alice in wonderland, if you don’t know where you’re going, then it doesn’t matter which road you take.
The irony of the journey of awakening is that in terms of the perceivable world, the direction that one must travel is no direction. One has to look within, but that place within that one is looking into is nowhere. One looks within into the emptiness of one’s own being, which is nowhere to be found in the perceivable world. One has to look into the darkness, not at the world the light of consciousness is illuminating. The darkness is the source of the light of consciousness that illuminates the perceivable world. The action that one must take is no action. One has to become willing to do nothing. One has to become desireless and selfless. One has to become willing to die. Giving up and letting go in the sense of one’s willingness to surrender and detach oneself from things is the process of dying, not at the level of body death but at the level of ego-death.
The ego is only a tangled mess of fears and desires limited to the form of a body. As long as one is expressing one’s own personally biased individual will, the ego is the emotional energy that animates the form of that body. That personally biased emotional expression is the only thing that makes one believe that one is a person in the world that one perceives. Before one can find oneself as a presence of consciousness at the center of one’s own world and discover one’s true nature, one must disentangle oneself from this tangle of fears and desires. One can only disentangle oneself through a self-destructive process of ego-death by giving up and letting go, as one surrenders to divine will and severs emotional attachments to things in that world.
Living a life in the world is only about creating a false sense of self. There is no true self to be discovered in the world one perceives or in what is beyond that world. There is only the false sense of self that one emotionally creates in the world one perceives and the truth beyond that world, which has no sense of self. Awakening from delusion is the journey that leads to No-self. As Jed McKenna points out, this journey is a process of ego-death as a means to No-self.
Awakening from delusion is a process of dying, or as Jed McKenna puts it, a self-destructive process of ego-death as a means to no-self. This self-destructive process can only go forward in a state of surrender to divine will, since all personally biased expressions of individual will are only about defending the survival of a mentally constructed body-based self-concept. One only becomes willing to surrender and give up the desire to defend oneself when one sees that one’s self-concept is an illusion of what one really is. Only when one sees the illusory nature of that self-concept will one become willing to surrender and give up the desire to control things in a self-defensive way. Even Freud was confused about why people become self-destructive, and described this phenomena as the death instinct, but in the sense of spirituality, the death instinct makes perfectly good sense as the spiritual longing one has to return to one’s true nature.
Surrender to divine will is only a part of the process that leads to ego-death. The ego is not only emotionally animated through the expression of self-defensive emotions, but also by the emotional energy inherent in emotional attachments. One must become willing to detach oneself from things to undergo ego-death. Detaching oneself from things is a process of death and dying that leads to acceptance of the loss of things and acceptance of death. One must accept the loss. Severing an emotional attachment always feels like something dies inside since part of one’s mentally constructed ego-structure dies away as an emotional attachment is severed. This ego deconstruction or dying process is inherently a process of giving up and letting go.
The stages of the process of death and dying are described as denial, then anger, then bargaining, then depression and disillusionment, and finally surrender and acceptance of death. The denial of death is a ubiquitous phenomenon that arises from the fear of death and nonexistence. The way death is denied is through the desire to control things and have power over things. If one has the power to control events, then one can expunge the fear of death. The denial of death is always expressed through the desire to control events as a way to expunge the fear of death. When one loses that power to control events, one goes through the various stages of the process of death and dying that eventually leads to surrender and acceptance of death. One never really had that power to control events in the first place, as the desire to control things through the expression of personally biased individual will is only an illusion of control. The unbiased expression of divine will is always firmly in control of the outcome of all events, including the death of one’s own body. When one finally surrenders to divine will, one is finally accepting that death.
Jed McKenna describes the apparent paradox of returning to the world after one has become enlightened through a self-destructive process of ego-death as a means to no-self. During the experience of becoming enlightened, which is the realization of the truth of what one is, one becomes the ultimate underlying reality of existence, which can only be described in terms of negation as the unchanging, undivided and unlimited pure being of the void, or the formless nothingness of pure consciousness that timelessly exists beyond the time-bound world of forms that one perceives. In terms of the holographic principle, forms of information about that world are projected like images from a holographic screen to one’s point of view in the audience of empty space and are animated in the flow of energy through that world. One’s own motion is animating that world in the sense of an observer in an accelerated frame of reference. One is that point of perceiving consciousness that is moving over the face of the deep, which is one’s holographic screen. When that motion comes to an end in an ultimate state of freefall, one can only fall back into the void and dissolve into the formless nothingness of undivided being.
One’s perceivable world is an illusion, like a virtual reality game that one is playing. When one leaves that illusion behind in order to experience the reality of what one really is, the illusion disappears from existence. When one returns to the illusion, the illusion reappears, but after enlightenment, one knows that one is only playing a virtual reality game. One has come out of the game and out of the illusion. One knows oneself only to be a pure presence of perceiving consciousness at the center of that holographic world, or a non-identified detached witness of things that is only perceiving and playing the game from its point of view in empty space.
Nisargadatta tells us that spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything. The basic problem is that when we emotionally attach ourselves to things, we then feel the need to control those things to insure that our needs are met. This kind of immaturity is apparent in the life of a baby or young child that must emotionally attach itself to its mother or other caregiver so that its needs are met and its desires are satisfied. The young child is dependent on its caregiver and cannot survive in the world without the care given by its caregiver as those needs are met. The dependent child naturally feels fearful and insecure about its survival and wants to control the behavior of its caregiver to insure its needs are met. The problem is, the more the child tries to control the behavior of its caregiver, the more the caregiver will resist those attempts at control, since nobody wants to be controlled. The more the child wants to control things, the more the child feels frustrated when things can’t be controlled. This frustration that arises from trying to control things that can’t be controlled is the psychic pain that we call misery and suffering.
The desire to control things that can’t be controlled is not only an act of immaturity, like a baby that wants to control its mother to insure that its needs are met, but is also an act of futility, since nothing wants to be controlled. The desire to control things that can’t be controlled can only lead to frustration and suffering. This state of affairs is the inevitable consequence of emotionally attaching ourselves to things. From the insecurity and fearfulness we feel when our desires aren’t satisfied we feel compelled to try to control things in a futile attempt to ensure our desires are satisfied, which only leads to feelings of frustration and suffering when we’re not able to control what can’t be controlled. This state of psychic pain is inherent to the human condition.
The only solution for the human condition is to give up our desire to control things and detach ourselves from things that can’t be controlled. Since nothing can be controlled, we have to sever our emotional attachments to everything. The only thing we do when we try to control things in a personally biased way is create an emotional disturbance in the normal flow of things, which makes us feel self-limited to a personal form. Giving up and letting go is the only real solution for ending the bondage of the human condition. Giving up and letting go ends the bondage of the human condition because it leads to a state of spiritual maturity. Unlike the human life-form, the spirit has no real need to attach itself to things or control things because its true spiritual nature has no desires that must be satisfied to insure its survival in the form of a human life-form. The human life-form is just another thing that appears to exist in the world the spirit perceives. The true nature of the spirit is always outside that world, only watching as the life-form struggles to survive in that world. Whatever appears to happen to the life-form in that world, the true nature of spiritual being never ceases to be. The spirit can only falsely believe its existence depends on the survival of the life-form when it identifies itself with the life-form. The spirit needs nothing to survive because the true nature of its existence is never threatened by whatever appears to happen in the world it perceives. It needs nothing because the true nature of its spiritual being is the formless nothingness of pure consciousness, which never ceases to exist.
Nisargadatta also tells us that freedom means letting go. When the spirit detaches itself from things, it also stops identifying itself with the human life-form, which is the only true freedom it can ever have. That is the only way the bondage of the human condition can come to an end.
Nisargadatta tells us that death gives freedom. Severing an emotional attachment feels like something dies inside because part of one’s emotionally energized ego-structure dies away as the attachment is severed. When an emotional attachment to something is severed, part of one’s ego dies away. Ego-structure can only become created through the emotional energy that relates the body-based concept of self to the concept of some other thing the subject perceives in its world in a subject-object relation of self and other. The true nature of the perceiving subject is only a focal point of perceiving consciousness to which the objective form of all things must be projected like images from a screen to the subject’s own point of view. The subject only has a mistaken perception about itself that a body-based self exists in the world it perceives when the subject emotionally identifies itself with its body-based self-concept, which is really just another thing the subject perceives in its world. Only the perception of emotional energy inherent in the emotional attachments that relate the form of the body to the form of other things can make the perceiving subject feel self-limited to the emotionally animated form of the body, which leads the subject to identify itself with that form and to mistakenly take that form to be its self. When the emotional attachments are severed and that emotional energy is no longer expended, that mistaken belief in a body-based self comes to an end. Severing emotional attachments and detaching oneself from things that appear in the world one perceives is the only way one’s emotionally energized ego-structure can be deconstructed. That process of ego-death feels like something dies inside. The ego becomes dead to the spiritual nature of the perceiving subject.
Ego-death is the only true freedom. The perceiving subject, which is the nature of the spirit, only becomes free when its ego dies away and the spirit no longer identifies itself with a body-based self-concept. Freedom is not freedom of the ego, but freedom from the ego. The spirit becomes free from ego. Giving up and letting go is the process of cleansing the self of all sense of self.
Nisargadatta tells us that to be free in the world, you must die to the world. Severing emotional attachments to things in the world is that letting-go process of dying to the world that’s the same as the death of the ego. To become free in the world, emotional attachments must be severed to everything in the world, including the world as a thing. The perceivable world is as much a thing as anything perceived in the world. Dying to the world is the letting-go process of severing emotional attachments to everything in the world, including the world as the whole thing.
This letting-go process only becomes possible when everything in the world, including the world as a thing, is seen to be an illusion and one loses interest in paying attention to an illusion. Only when one withdraws one’s attention away from the illusion and withdraws one’s investment of emotional energy in the illusion is one’s emotional attachment to the illusion severed. Once its emotional attachment to the illusion is severed, the spiritual nature of the perceiving subject is free to watch the illusion from a higher level of consciousness with a detached sense of distance from the illusion. By detaching itself from the illusion, the perceiving subject has put some space around itself and no longer identifies itself with anything it perceives in the illusion. That sense of detachment from the illusion is the only true freedom the perceiving subject can ever have.
The awakening process is really only about death and dying. You have to accept the loss and accept death, not at the level of body death but at the deeper level of ego-death. The reason you surrender and give up the desire to control things in a personally biased self-defensive way is so you can undergo ego-death. When you surrender, you put your trust in divine will to sort out what is for the best and accept what is as it is every moment. You accept things as they are in the moment. That’s how the flow of emotional energy through your body comes into alignment with the normal flow of things. That’s how you feel connected to things, rather than self-limited to the emotionally animated form of a body. You give up expressing self-defensive emotions by giving up personal bias in the focus of your attention and giving up the expression of personally biased individual will. You stop fighting, resisting, defending, interfering and trying to control things. You must give up and surrender before you can undergo ego-death.
You also must let go and detach yourself from things. When you sever an emotional attachment, it feels like something dies inside because part of your emotionally animated ego-structure dies away. Before you can let go, you must accept the loss and accept death. The acceptance of death is an inherent aspect of the process of death and dying. Before you undergo ego-death, you must accept death. Giving up and letting go is the process of undergoing ego-death. That process of giving up and letting go can only go forward if you accept the loss and accept death.
The reason you undergo this process of ego-death is so you stop identifying yourself with your character in the world you perceive. When you surrender, you stop identifying yourself with your character in that world. This is the fundamental death-rebirth transformation whereby you die to your personal self-identification with the body and are reborn in identity to the spirit. When you detach yourself from things, you see that world from a higher level of consciousness with a sense of distance and detachment. When you see that world is only an illusion and your character is only an illusion of what you really are, you lose interest in paying attention to an illusion. When you withdraw your attention away from that world, you also withdraw your investment of emotional energy in that world that is animating your character. That is how you become desireless. When you shift the focus of your attention onto your own sense of beingness and presence and look deeply into the emptiness of your own being while in this desireless state, you enter into an ultimate state of freefall and that world disappears from existence. By falling into and dissolving into the void, you finally realize the truth of what you are.
The only way you can realize the truth of what you are is to accept death. Everything else you can do in the world you perceive in the sense of your expression of personally biased individual will is a denial of death, which is a denial of the truth of what you really are.
If you’re really serious about awakening, then you have to become willing to die. You have to accept death. You have to die before you can be reborn. You have to become willing to die, not at the superficial level of body death, but at the deeper level of ego-death. Your personal self-concept has to die away inside of you. It has to become dead to you. The way it dies away is when you detach yourself from things. As you sever your emotional attachments, your personal self-concept dies away inside you and becomes dead to you. At a practical level, the life of your character in the world you perceive becomes dead to you. You stop caring about the life of your character in the world and lose interest in living that life. You see that life to be an illusion of what you really are and lose interest in paying attention to an illusion. You lose the desire to live that life. That’s when you really sever the emotional attachment and become able to withdraw your attention away from the illusion. You have to lose interest in the illusion before you can turn around, shift the focus of your attention onto your own sense of being present as a presence of consciousness at the center of your own world, and look within into the emptiness of your own being. That’s where you have to look before you can discover the truth of what you really are. That’s what awakening means. When the illusion disappears, you discover the truth of your own being. Truth is what’s left over when the illusion disappears from existence.
Discovering the truth of your own being is the same as dying since the life of your character in the world you perceive has to become dead to you. That’s what it means to detach yourself from that life, lose interest in living that life, and stop caring about the life of your character. Dying is the same as becoming desireless. Your life enabling desire to live that life has to die away. You can only appear to live that life if you express the desire to live that life. You have to lose the desire to live that life. You only become willing to die when you see that life to be an illusion of what you really are and lose interest in paying attention to an illusion. You withdraw your desire to live that life away from that life when you withdraw your attention away from that life. You have to withdraw the emotional energy away from that life. Your investment of emotional energy in living that life, which is your desire to live that life, is the only thing that animates that life and keeps it going. Without that investment of emotional energy, that life dies away. The way you withdraw your emotional energy away from that life is by withdrawing your attention away from that life. That’s when you first become able to look within and focus on your own sense of being present as a presence of consciousness at the center of your own world. That’s when you first become able to look within into the emptiness of your own being. That’s where you have to look before you can discover the truth of what you really are.
At the most fundamental level, you have to discriminate the only true thing you can ever know about yourself, which is your own sense of being present, from everything you know about the life your character appears to live in the world you perceive, which only creates a false sense of self. Discrimination leads to detachment in the sense that when you look within and refocus your attention on your own sense of being present, you also detach yourself from the world you perceive by withdrawing the outward focus of your attention on that world, which withdraws your investment of emotional energy in that world and severs your emotional attachment to things in that world. That’s when you become able to look within and refocus your attention on your own sense of being present and look within into the emptiness of your being, which is where you have to look to discover the true nature of what you really are.
The reason you surrender to divine will and sever your emotional attachment to everything in your world is so you can become desireless. You become desireless when your desire to live the life of your character in the world you perceive dies away. You have to lose that desire to live that life. You have to become willing to die. You have to hate the falseness of that life so much that you’d rather die than continue to live the life of a lie. You have to accept death. That’s how you become desireless. You have to see that world as an illusion and the life of your character as an illusion of what you really are, and lose interest in paying attention to an illusion. That’s when you become able to withdraw your attention away from the illusion and withdraw your investment of emotional energy in the illusion. That’s when you become able to shift your focus of attention away from the illusion, look within, and refocus your attention on your own sense of being present. You have to discriminate everything you perceive about the life your character lives in the world you perceive, which is an illusion of what you really are, from the only true thing you can ever know about yourself, which is your sense of being present. You have to reject the false, embrace the truth, and detach yourself from the false. You have to refuse to play the game to get out of the game. In that desireless state in which you become willing to die, you look within and refocus your attention only on your own sense of being present to the exclusion of everything else that you can perceive about the life of your character in the world.
The awakening process can be stripped down to your own sense of being present as you become aware of yourself as a presence of consciousness perceiving things in your own world. This presence of consciousness with its own sense of being present as it perceives things in its own world is called I Am or the Self. That presence of perceiving consciousness is what you come to know yourself to be as you begin to awaken and become conscious of yourself as the Self.
You know that you are here now because you have the sense of being present as you perceive things in the world in the present moment. The problem is that when you look within, you cannot find yourself as the perceiver of things. You cannot find yourself in the sense of being another thing that you can perceive as you perceive things. Even as you look within, the perceiver of things cannot be found, and yet you have the sense of being present as you perceive things.
When you look within, you can perceive your thoughts, memories, beliefs, feelings, emotional states, and even your own self-concepts, but those things can’t be what you really are because they’re just more stuff that you can perceive. You have the sense of being present as the perceiving consciousness that perceives all that stuff, but when you look within, you can’t find yourself as the perceiver. Once you’ve removed all the stuff that you can perceive from your field of view, all that’s left is silence, emptiness and nothingness, like the empty space of a room from which all the furnishings have been removed, and yet your own sense of being present remains within this empty space. You still have your own sense of being present as a presence of perceiving consciousness even when you don’t perceive anything else. Even if you remove everything from your field of view and perceive nothing, your sense of being present remains.
The essential nature of the problem is you cannot perceive yourself as the perceiver of things in the sense of being another thing. Your own perceiving consciousness is not-a-thing that you can perceive, and yet you remain aware of this nothingness with your own sense of being present. You remain aware of your own sense of being present even when you perceive nothing.
The only way you can awaken to the truth of what you really are is if you continue to focus your attention on your own sense of being present even as you become willing to perceive nothing else. You must stabilize your attention on your own sense of being present and remain aware of yourself in the sense of being present as a presence of perceiving consciousness even as you become willing to perceive nothing else. Remaining aware of your own sense of being present as you perceive nothing is the whole trick of passing through the gateless gate and awakening. You can only pass through the gateless gate if you are naked of all things. The only thing you can take with you as you pass through the gate is your own sense of being present, which is not-a-thing.
All Seeing Eye
Your willingness to remain aware of your own sense of being present while you perceive nothing is your willingness to look into the darkness of the deep. The light of consciousness is divided from the darkness of the deep when your holographic world is illuminated and you perceive that world. The darkness is the Source of the light of consciousness illuminating the world you perceive, but you cannot find yourself or discover your true nature in that world. The perceiver of things cannot be found in the perceivable world that it perceives. Like Neo in the Matrix, you have to put on your dark glasses and become willing to look into the darkness before you can discover the true nature of what you really are.
There is No Spoon
Do not try to bend the spoon. That is impossible. Only try to realize the truth.
What truth?
There is no spoon. Then you’ll see it is not the spoon that bends, but only yourself.
The awakening process is only about stripping everything away until you perceive nothing while you remain aware of your own sense of being present. You have to remove everything from the room you occupy until there is nothing left to perceive in the room except for empty space. Even the walls of the room have to be removed. The reason you surrender to divine will is to undergo the death-rebirth transformation. You have to die in identity to the embodied form of a person you perceive and be reborn of the spirit. That spirit is your own perceiving consciousness that you become aware of with your own sense of being present. The reason you detach yourself from things is so you can know yourself to be a non-identified detached witness of things and see things from a higher level of consciousness with a sense of distance and detachment.
Once you see that all the things you perceive in your world are only illusions, including the person you take yourself to be, you lose interest in paying attention to an illusion. When you withdraw your attention away from the illusion, you also withdraw your investment of emotional energy in the illusion that animates the illusion. That is how you become desireless. When you shift the focus of your attention onto your own sense of being present and look within into the emptiness of your own being while in this desireless state, you are stripping away everything you can perceive down to the nothingness of empty space. Not only does the room you occupy become empty of things, but even the walls of the room disappear. The walls of the room and everything that appears in the room were only holographic illusions created by the energy the Self expends due to its motion in its accelerated frame of reference. Those illusions disappear in an ultimate state of freefall. The walls of the room, which is a holographic screen, is the only thing that creates a sense of limitation and divides the Self from its true undivided nature. That limitation and division comes to an end in an ultimate state of freefall. This experience of falling into the void is the self-destructive process of ego-death that leads to the experience of No-self.
When the individual being of the Self becomes desireless and selfless and the world of things it perceives disappears from existence, the gateless gate opens. The divided being of the Self, the sense of being present, reunites itself with and dissolves into the undivided being of No-self.
At the level of the Self, what you are is a presence of consciousness that perceives its own world from the center of that world. Everything that you can perceive in that world, which includes all external sensory perceptions of that world, all internal emotional perceptions of your body, all mental perceptions of your mind, all thoughts, memories of the past, anticipations of the future, self-concepts and all other forms of mental imagination, are perceptions created as forms of information animated in the flow of energy, which the holographic principle tells us are like animated images projected from a holographic screen to the central point of view of the observer. That perception always occurs in the present moment, which is an eternal now.
Quantum theory tells us the quantum state of potentiality for the observer’s world not only includes the potentiality for the form of all possible things the observer can observe in its world, but also the potentiality for all possible ways in which energy can flow through the observer’s world and animate all things in that world. Not only do the forms of things come into an actual state of existence when they’re being observed, but the animating flow of energy also comes into an actual state of existence when observed. To be observed, the observer must be present to make the observation, which means the observer must focus its attention on whatever is being observed for the observed things or the observed flow of energy to come into an actual state of existence. If the observer is not present to make the observation, neither the observed form of things nor the observed flow of energy can come in an actual state of existence, and both the form of things and the flow of energy remain in an unobserved state of potentiality.
Everything the observer can perceive in its world, which not only includes the form of all things, which can all be reduced to qubits of information, but also the flow of energy that animates all things, only exists in a state of potentiality until observed, at which moment the observed form of things and the animating flow of energy come into an actual state of existence. The observer must be present at that moment of observation to make the observation. That present moment is always an eternal now for which the observer must be present to observe things.
When the observer is not present to make the observation, neither the observed form of things nor the observed flow of energy can come in an actual state of existence, and both the form of things and the flow of energy remain in an unobserved state of potentiality. When the observer is not present to observe its world, that world disappears from existence from the observer’s own point of view. Not being present for one’s world means withdrawing one’s attention away from that world, which is the same as withdrawing one’s investment of emotional energy in that world. Not only does the observer’s world disappear from existence, but so too does the observer. The individual being of the Self dissolves into the undivided being of No-self. In terms of the holographic principle, that ultimate state of dissolution into absolute nothingness can only occur in an ultimate state of freefall, which the observer experiences as falling into the void.
Nisargadatta describes the present moment is the only place that one can ever find oneself as a presence of consciousness, called the Self, I Am or the witness, at the center of the world one perceives. Beyond that perceivable world and beyond the Self is the Source of consciousness. Nisargadatta describes that the totality of all mental projections is the great illusion. Beyond the mind is the witness. Beyond the witness is infinite emptiness and silence. It is deep and dark, mystery beyond mystery. It is like a bottomless well. Whatever falls into it disappears.
Maya will try to trick you into paying attention to the illusion by offering you another thrill in the illusion or by scaring you out of your wits by threatening the survival of your personal form within the illusion, but don’t be fooled. Maya is only created when you express fear and desire, which you must express in order to create the illusion and perceive the illusion, but you can only express that fear and desire if you focus your attention on the illusion. You have to be interested in the illusion in order to pay attention to the illusion. Without your interest in the illusion you stop paying attention to the illusion and stop emotionally animating the illusion.
In the awakening process, you have to clearly see that you are creating the illusion of your own personal self-concept and identity as you express fear and desire. You do that with personal bias in the focus of your attention, which gives rise to the expression of your own personally biased individual will. At the level of individual will, you have the limited ability to choose the things you perceive in your world as you focus your attention on those things. You only fall into a hypnotic spell of personal self-identification when you feel like you have no choice but to focus your attention on your own personal self-concept. You feel emotionally compelled to defend the survival of that personal identity as though your existence depends on it, which gives rise to the expression of the personally biased emotions of fear and desire that perpetuate the illusion of personal identity. The only way you can break this vicious cycle is if you lose that personal bias in the focus of your attention, which can only happen if you see the illusion to be an illusion and lose interest in paying attention to it. You have to make a choice to withdraw your attention away from the illusion. You have a limited ability to choose what you can observe in the world you perceive as you focus your attention on that world, but you have the absolute ability to refuse to focus your attention on that world. You can withdraw your attention away from the world you perceive anytime you want to and perceive nothing. You can always refuse to play the game.
The other thing to be clear about is the price of refusing to play the game. The price of truth is everything. At the level of the Self, which is what you are as a presence of consciousness that perceives its own world from the central point of view of that world, you have the sense of being present or I-Am-ness, which is the first concept that you can ever have about yourself. You have to have the concept I Am before you can have any other concepts. That concept is inherent in the subject-object relation of an observer observing things in its own observable world, which gives rise to the sense of self and other. The concept I Am must arise before any other concepts about the nature of the world the observer perceives can arise. Only the Self can create for itself all the concepts it has about the nature of the world it perceives. I Am is the first concept that underlies all other concepts the Self has about itself and its world. At the ultimate level of reality, nothing is perceived. At the ultimate level of reality, there is No-self and there are no concepts. At the ultimate level of reality, there is only absolute nothingness. In the process of awakening to the truth of what it really is, the Self must lose all concepts, including the concept I Am.
To be clear about things, individual existence does depend on the creation of dualistic reality, but the existence of nondual reality does not. The individual existence of the Self, sensed as I Am, depends on the creation of dualistic reality as the Self observes observable things in its own observable world in a subject-object relation of self and other. The undivided existence of nondual reality, which is the absolute nothingness of No-self, depends on nothing. As is realized during the awakening process, and as the Bhagavad-Gita tells us, the reason this distinction is so important is because dualistic reality is like a virtual reality. It isn’t really real. It has no being. It’s unreal. Even the individual existence of the Self depends on the undivided existence of its Source for its sense of being present. Only nondual reality is really real. It never ceases to be.
Jed McKenna points out that the awakening process requires focus and intent. One must have a clearly expressed intent and focus one’s time, energy and attention on the awakening process like a laser beam. One has to be serious and disciplined. One has to discipline one’s focus of attention on the awakening process as one looks within and prevent one’s attention from wandering around in an outwardly way and becoming distracted by all the distractions the world has to offer.
Dualistic reality is a dream. Nondual reality is the dreamer. When the dreamer awakens from its dream, the dream disappears from existence and only the true nature of the dreamer remains. That true nature can only be described in terms of negation as void or nothingness, which is the ultimate nature of existence. The essential nature of duality is an observer observing some observable thing in a subject-object relation of self and other. The perceiving subject, which is the nature of the Self, is as much a part of the dream as is everything that is observable in the objective world the observer observes. The dualistic universe is a dream. When the dreamer awakens from its dream, the observable world disappears from existence, but so too does the observer. When the observable world disappears from existence from the point of view of the observer that perceives it, the observer also disappears as it dissolves into the nothingness of undivided being. There is No-self in nondual reality. The Self is as much a part of the dream as is the perceivable world. Both Self and world disappear from existence when the dreamer awakens.
In the journey of awakening, the key concept is further. One has to continue one’s journey until there is no further. The word further is like the Zen koan: First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain. The mountain is a part of the dream, and disappears from existence when the dreamer awakens from its dream. No further means there is no mountain. The mountain is a metaphor for the observable world. When the dreamer awakens from its dream, everything in the observable world, including the world as a thing, disappears from existence and nothing remains. That nothingness is the underlying nature of reality or the ground of being. It is the ultimate truth in that it is the ultimate nature of existence. It is nondual or one in the sense that it is undivided. It is infinite in the sense that it is unlimited. It is absolute nothingness in the sense that it is nothing perceivable. The direct experience of that nothingness is the ultimate awakening.
Maybe you’ve had a limited degree of awakening in the sense of becoming more conscious of yourself as the Self. Congratulations. The problem is this is only an awakening within the dream like lucid dreaming. You’re still dreaming, which means there is still further. Maybe you’ve come to feel connected to things in the dream because you’ve surrendered and stopped fighting against the dream and allowed yourself to come into alignment with the normal flow of things in the dream. Congratulations, but you’re still dreaming, which means there is still further. You’re still seeing two where there’s really only one. You’re seeing things in a subject-object relation of self and other. The only way to know one is to be one, which is to be nothing. You won’t awaken from the dream and know what no further means until you stop dreaming and the dream disappears from existence. The price of truth is everything, but you won’t know what paying that price means until you’ve lost everything, including your own sense of self. Nondual reality has no sense of self. You’ll only awaken from the dream and experience the nothingness of nondual reality if you become willing to lose everything, including your own sense of self.
The only way you can awaken to the truth of what you really are is if you become willing to lose everything, including your own sense of self. You have to allow your Self to dissolve into the undivided being of No-self. That is the only way you can become One. Know your Self to be and only identify your Self with That formless nothingness of pure consciousness.
Further ultimately leads to the end of an illusion. That illusion isn’t only the illusion of the world that one appears to live in as one perceives that world, but also the end of the illusion of the individual being of an observer that perceives that world in a subject-object relation of self and other. Not only does the apparent life of the life-form one takes oneself to be come to an end, but the individual being of the Self that identifies itself with that life-form as it appears to live an embodied life in that world also comes to an end. In this sense, the ultimate nature of death is the end of an illusion, not just at the level of the body, but also at the level of individual being.
The gate blocking one from enlightenment is the Self, which is the perceiving consciousness of the observer at the center of its own holographic world. Enlightenment only becomes possible when the Self becomes selfless. That is how one passes through the gateless gate, which is the experience of falling into the void and dissolving into undivided being. As long as the individual being of the Self remains divided from undivided being, awakening is not possible. That division is created by all the false beliefs the Self believes about itself, which is the nature of delusion. Those false beliefs are all self-concepts. One’s entire field of view is filled by delusion because the Self is perceiving its own holographic world within which it is emotionally creating delusional self-concepts. The perceiving consciousness of the Self is prior to that perception. Delusion resides prior to perception because the Self believes these false beliefs about itself.
The false beliefs one believes about oneself create an identity-crisis for the perceiving subject that sees their delusional nature. Only awakening from delusion solves this identity-crisis. The only true identity is the absolute nothingness of the Source that becomes divided into the Self.
Destroying delusion is the process of destroying false beliefs. That self-destructive process of destroying all self-concepts is the self-destructive process of ego-death. Once all self-concepts have been destroyed, the Self no longer has any false beliefs that it can believe about itself, and so delusion has been destroyed. Delusion never really existed because it was only created out of the false beliefs the Self believed about itself. The Self emotionally creates its own self-concepts that it believes about itself. Creation is emotionally driven in the sense that the Self expresses fear and desire in its own accelerated frame of reference as it moves over the face of the deep, which is its holographic screen. Delusion is destroyed when the Self becomes selfless, which requires the destruction of all emotionally energized personal self-concepts. That self-destructive process is the only way the gateless gate can open, which allows one to awaken and become enlightened. As one passes through the gateless gate, the individual being of the selfless Self returns to, reunites itself with, and dissolves into the undivided being of No-self.
What Science and Modern Physics are Really Trying to Tell Us
The hard mathematical science of modern physics tells us that the world is no more real than a virtual reality, like a virtual reality game that one plays on a computer screen. Modern physics in the context of the holographic principle tells us that the perceivable world consists of nothing more than forms of information projected like images from a holographic screen to the point of view of an observer outside that screen and the animation of those images in the flow of energy that animates that world. That’s the nature of a holographic world. It isn’t really real. It’s a virtual reality. Just as the Bhagavad-Gita says, it’s unreal. It has no being. The true nature of being solely belongs to nondual reality. Only nondual reality is really real. It never ceases to be.
When the word truth is used in any nondual tradition, this refers to the true nature of being, which is inherent to the nondual reality of the void. What about mathematical truth? Mathematical truth is inherent in the potentiality of the void to create geometry. As mathematicians have long known, all mathematical truths are geometrical in nature. Great mathematicians have been Platonists in the sense they know they only discover mathematical truths inherent in the potentiality to create geometry. Geometrical mathematical truth is what underlies the geometric creation of the holographic illusion of a holographic world.
The void has no limits in terms of its expression of potentiality, but in order to create that holographic world in the form of a virtual reality in which living organisms appear to live, its expression of potentiality to create that geometry must become constrained in a way that leads to the expression of mathematical rules governing that world that are consistent with the expression of life. In physics, this constraint on the expression of potentiality by the void to create geometry in a way consistent with the expression of life is called the anthropic principle.
The anthropic principle is like natural selection on a cosmic scale. Each observer chooses what is best for itself from its own point of view in its own holographic world in terms of being able to live the best possible life in that world, but the choices of different observers are intertwined due to information sharing among their overlapping holographic screens. Entangled qubits of information for each observer’s holographic world are encoded on its own cosmic horizon that arises due to the expansion of space. The acceleration rate with which space expands is called the cosmological constant in relativity theory. A change in this acceleration rate of the expansion of space results in a change in the radius of the observer’s cosmic horizon. In physics this kind of change is conceptualized to occur as a phase transition from a less stable meta-stable state to a more stable meta-stable state as the acceleration rate takes on a lower value, which results in a larger radius of the cosmic horizon. Each phase transition in the value of the acceleration rate is like a new big bang event as the observer’s cosmic horizon increases in size, decreases in temperature, and encodes more qubits of information. It’s well known in physics that this kind of phase transition, called spontaneous symmetry breaking, can reset the parameters in the laws of physics, like the mass or charge of the electron. Every reset of the laws of physics is a kind of fine-tuning of those laws that allows the laws to be more compatible with the expression of life.
The anthropic principle reflects this fine-tuning of the laws of physics that occur during the phase transition with the resetting of the laws of physics. Each phase transition is like a new big bang event that creates a new universe, which is only possible because the acceleration rate of the expansion of space is transitioning to a lower value. Choices made during the phase transition in terms of resetting the parameters in the laws of physics are made in such a way as to be more compatible with the expression of life in the new universe. These choices always reflect an interplay of the expression of divine will that gives rise to the expansion of space that creates the geometry of a holographic world and the choices each observer makes in its own holographic world as it appears to live the best possible life of a living organism in that world.
The choices an observer makes in its own world allows the observer to become a co-creator of that world in conjunction with the totality of all choices made by all other observers that share a consensual reality with that particular observer and the expression of divine will. Divine will allows for the creation of geometry in the sense of the accelerated expansion of space that gives rise to each observer’s cosmic horizon and the encoding of information on each horizon along the lines of some geometric mechanism like non-commutative geometry. Even the flow of energy through the observer’s world must arise from the expression of divine will along the lines of the expansion of space. An observer becomes a co-creator of its own world when it allows its choices to come into alignment with the expression of divine will. The anthropic principle tells us that those choices are directed in such a way as to best allow for the expression of life.
Ultimate truth cannot be equated with mathematical truth, but they are related. Ultimate truth is consciousness in its ultimate stateless state, which can only be conceptualized in terms of negation as absolute nothingness, but because it is undivided, it can also be called one, and because it is unlimited, it can also be called infinity. What it can’t be called is two, hence the designation nondual. Nondual consciousness is the Source (Brahman). When the Source creates a dualistic world for its Self (Atman) to perceive in a subject-object relation, it can also be called three in the sense of the trinity of the Source (the Father), the Self (the Holy Spirit) and the person in the world (the Son). In the process of creating that dualistic world, Atman is divided from Brahman, and that dualistic world is limited by a holographic screen. The reason the Source can create something from nothing is because consciousness is becoming divided and limited. By its very nature, a holographic screen limits and divides Atman from Brahman as it encodes information for the holographic world that Atman perceives. A holographic screen and the images of a holographic world projected to Atman are inherently a geometric creation. The reason the Source can create a dualistic world is because the Source has the potentiality to create geometry. Mathematical truth only enters into the equation in terms of the creation of geometry. As mathematicians have long known, geometry underlies all mathematical truth, but ultimate truth underlies geometry. Ultimate truth has the potential to create mathematical truth whenever it creates geometry, which is an essential aspect of creating a holographic world.
Unless you’ve investigated the true nature of your own consciousness, you really have no idea what you’re talking about when you talk about yourself. The problem is called delusion. Only consciousness has its own independent existence, but when consciousness identifies itself with a person in the world it perceives, it believes delusional beliefs about itself. Consciousness exists prior to the creation of that world, is present at the creation of that world, and is present for everything that appears to happen in that world. Consciousness exists before that world appears to come into existence and after that world disappears from existence. Whatever appears to happen in that world, consciousness is present to observe that happening. This isn’t about anybody’s consciousness in particular, but about the ultimate nature of consciousness. Everybody’s consciousness is only a fragment of that ultimate consciousness. Consciousness is not personal. Consciousness does not belong to a person. A person is a physical organism, which is essentially an animated body that only appears in the world perceived by a presence of consciousness. There is only confusion about this fact because of the nature of delusion. The mind falsely tells consciousness that it is a person in the world it perceives as self-referential thoughts are created in the mind, and consciousness believes the lie of this false self-concept, which are the false beliefs that consciousness believes about itself, because those thoughts are emotionally energized by the same emotional energy that animates the form of a body. As consciousness perceives that flow of emotional energy, it feels self-limited to the form of that emotionally animated body and identifies itself with that body. That personal self-identification is the nature of delusion, which is inherently driven by the expression of emotions.
An interesting project is to cross-reference what Nisargadatta Maharaj has to say about personal self-identification in I Am That with what neuroscientists say about personal self-identification. A good book to read on this subject is The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio. If you read Damasio closely, you’ll see that neuroscience really has no explanation for the nature of consciousness in the sense of the perceiving observer who is perceiving thoughts and feelings, and has no idea who is identifying itself with the body. This is the reason that almost all people who work in neuroscience and artificial intelligence have come to the conclusion that perceiving consciousness is an illusion. They only acknowledge the reality of the things being perceived, like the emotional energy that energizes thoughts and the information content that’s inherent in thoughts. They have no idea about the nature of the observer that is actually perceiving that energy and information content inherent in a thought.
Damasio describes the movie-in-the-mind, but then denies the existence of the observer out in the audience. For Damasio, the person and the world depicted in the movie are the only things that are real. Nisargadatta also describes the movie-in-the-mind, but doesn’t deny the existence of the observer. For Nisargadatta, everything in the movie, including the person and the world, are unreal. Only the observer out in the audience, called the Self, is real. For Damasio, the movie-in-the-mind is a virtual reality created in the brain, while the body and the brain exist in a real world. For Nisargadatta, the world is a virtual reality depicted as the movie-in-the-mind. For Damasio, the movie screen is created in the brain. For Nisargadatta, the movie screen is the boundary of the observer’s world, which in modern physics is called a holographic screen. That holographic screen always arises as an event horizon in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference, and so there is a natural place for the observer as the perceiving consciousness present at the central point of view of its own holographic world. For Damasio, there is no natural place for the observer since the movie screen has to arise inside a brain inside the world. Like all neuroscientists, Damasio denies the existence of perceiving consciousness. The problem for neuroscience is the logical inconsistency of trying to create a movie-in-the-mind that depicts the life of a person in the world inside the brain of that person inside that physical world. The only natural place to depict that movie is on a holographic screen that bounds that world.
The denial of the existence of perceiving consciousness by neuroscience is very odd since all thoughts, like everything else in the world, is perceived in a subject-object relation. The subject is the observer and the object is composed of the energy and information content inherent in the thing being perceived. Neuroscience and artificial intelligence are denying the existence of the subject, which is the perceiving consciousness of the observer. This is very odd because every observer has its own inherent self-knowledge that it exists as the perceiving subject of whatever it is observing. Every subject has the inherent sense of being present as an observer of things and knows that it exists, and yet neuroscience and artificial intelligence researchers deny the existence of perceiving consciousness and call that sense of your own existence an illusion.
The remarkable thing about modern physics and the holographic principle is it turns the nature of illusion totally around. The perceivable world is the holographic illusion created through holographic projection. Everything in the perceivable world can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen, and that holographic screen can always be understood to arise as an event horizon in an observer’s accelerated frame of reference. Understanding the observable world in this way tells us that the world is the holographic illusion and only the perceiving consciousness of the observer has its own independent existence. The existence of the perceiving subject exists before that holographic world appears to come into existence, while events are being perceived in that world, and after that world disappears from existence. Where do you think you go when you fall into a deep sleep at night and your world disappears from existence? Once you stop identifying yourself with the person in the world you take yourself to be as you perceive that world and know yourself only to be the perceiving subject of that world in the sense of being present as a presence of perceiving consciousness at the central point of view of that world, then you know the answer to this question.
Physicists that buy into the conventional physicalism paradigm that physical reality is the only reality and deny the independent existence of the reality of consciousness will object that a person’s body still appears to exist in the world when that person is in a state of deep sleep. This observation really has nothing to do with the reality of consciousness, but only pertains to the consensual reality shared by multiple observers that appears to exist due to information sharing. Multiple observers, each present at their own point of view and each observing their own holographic world defined on their own holographic screen, can share a consensual reality when their respective holographic screens overlap in the sense of a Venn diagram and share information. Even when an observer’s own holographic world disappears from existence from its own point of view, other observers can continue to observe that particular observer’s inanimate sleeping body in their own holographic worlds due to information sharing. When multiple people play an interactive virtual reality game on their own computers, each connected to the internet, and one of the people turns off the game, the avatar of that person still appears in the game played by the other people, except that particular avatar will no longer be animated when its owner no longer plays the game. Falling into a deep sleep is analogous to turning off the game.
Physicists that buy into the physicalism paradigm deny the possibility of individual choice in a world of potentiality and deny the independent existence of consciousness as the observer of that world, and are often forced into the camp of the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory along with elements of quantum decoherence if they want to maintain any semblance of logical consistency, but that’s not the correct way to understand the world. The correct starting point is to assume the independent existence of the consciousness of the observer and show how the holographic principle naturally leads to what we call physical reality. Physical reality is not really something fundamental, but is more like a virtual reality, sort of like the Matrix.
Choice is an inevitable aspect of the world due to the potentialities of the world. The quantum state of the world is a superposition of all possible potentialities. In order to reduce this quantum state of potentiality to an observed state of actuality, a choice has to be made. When you come to a fork in the road, you have to choose which path to take. When you order off a menu, you have to make a choice about what to order. If you say that no choice is made, then you’re saying that everything is predetermined in some cosmic Newtonian deterministic mechanism and that there really is no quantum state of potentiality. Either you’re assuming the Einsteinian or Bohmian idea of nonlocal hidden variables that determine everything or you’re assuming the Everett many worlds interpretation of quantum theory. That’s certainly possible, but the correct understanding of the world keeps potentiality an inherent aspect of the world. A choice must be made every time the superposition of potentialities is reduced to an observed state of actuality.
The basic problem with the physicalism paradigm is there is no place for an observer to exist inside the world that the observer perceives. There is no logically consistent way an observer that exists inside an observable world can choose what it observes in that world in the sense of reducing the quantum state of potentiality of that world to an observed state of actuality. It is logically inconsistent to assume that multiple observers exist inside the same observable world and each make choices in that world that reduce the quantum state of potentiality of that world. That kind of assumption leads to paradoxes like the Wigner friend paradox. The only logically consistent way to resolve this problem is to assume that every observer observes its own observable world and make choices in that world as the quantum state of potentiality of that world is reduced to an observed state of actuality, but then the observer really doesn’t exist in that observable world. The holographic principle tells us that the observer exists at the center of its own holographic world as images of that world are projected from a holographic screen to the observer’s central point of view. That holographic world is observer-dependent and only arises in the observer’s accelerated frame of reference as the observer’s holographic screen arises as an event horizon. Multiple observers, each existing at their own point of view, can only share a consensual reality in the sense of information sharing among overlapping holographic screens. An observer can only choose what it observes in its own holographic world in the sense of how the observer focuses the attention of its perceiving consciousness on events in that world.
Physics says that choices are made in an unbiased or random way, but even a random choice is a choice. There is also the possibility that choices can be made in a biased way. Who would make those biased choices? The answer is the observer makes its own biased choices based on the way the observer focuses its attention on events in the world it perceives. The observer has preferences because the observer has likes and dislikes. For example, the observer likes experiencing pleasure and dislikes experiencing pain. This brings us to the problem of qualia. Physics can only describe mathematical quantities, but when we perceive things, we perceive subjective qualities. Physics can only specify the wavelength or frequency of a light wave, and no one who works in neuroscience or artificial intelligence can explain how that mathematical quantity is perceived as the quality of color. The problem of qualia is inherent to the nature of consciousness itself. Consciousness has its own preferences of likes and dislikes, essentially what feels good and what feels bad, and will always choose to focus its attention in such a way as to choose what it likes and avoid what it dislikes. The reason consciousness can make choices is because the world that consciousness perceives is described by a mathematical quantum state of potentiality. Consciousness is making a choice every time that quantum state is reduced to an actual observed state. Who is making that choice? You are making that choice as the observer or as a presence of perceiving consciousness at the central point of view of your own holographic world. You make that choice as you focus your attention on that world. At night when you fall into a deep sleep, you withdraw your attention away from that world and that world disappears from existence from your own point of view, but you still exist as consciousness.
Neuroscientists object that the problem of qualia remains unsolved because the information processing of the brain is extremely complex and there’s no telling what form that processed information will take, but this complexity argument is really only a smoke-screen for the logical inconsistency of their argument. The problem is, the input data into the brain is in the form of mathematical quantities, like the rate with which neurons fire their electro-chemical outputs of synaptic potentials. These synaptic potentials are transmitted between neurons, and so there is the transmission of electro-chemical information. When a large number of neurons are involved in this information transfer, as happens in the brain, some kind of information processing does indeed occur. The problem is, the output of this information processing is also in the form of synaptic potentials. The output data is still in the form of mathematical quantities. Neuroscience has absolutely no explanation for how this mathematical output data is perceived in the form of subjective qualities. Just like the problem of how the frequency of a light wave is perceived as a color, how is a neuron firing rate perceived as a subjectively perceived quality? Neuroscience has no answer and never will have an answer because the perception of subjectively perceived qualities is inherent to the nature of the perceiving subject and not to any mathematical quantity that characterizes a perceived object. The problem is that neuroscientists deny the existence of the perceiving subject because they deny the existence of perceiving consciousness, and so they will never be able to find a solution for the problem of qualia. Subjectively perceived qualities like color are not an aspect of the mathematical quantities that characterize perceived objects but rather of the perceiving subject that perceives objects in a subject-object relation.
Physicists make two mistakes when they discuss the holographic principle. The first mistake is they don’t take an observer-centric point of view. They mix up what appears to happen in the bulk with the way qubits of information are encoded on the screen. The bulk description includes space-time geometry, the force of gravity that arises from the curvature of space-time geometry, the particles of the electromagnetic and nuclear forces, and all the matter particles that comprise things like atoms, molecules and bodies. Everything we perceive in the world is part of the bulk description. The holographic screen description only describes the way qubits of information are encoded on the screen. That holographic screen always arises as an event horizon that bounds the space-time geometry of the observer’s own holographic world. The screen arises from the central point of view of the observer in the observer’s own accelerated frame of reference.
The mistake physicists make is to mix up the bulk description with the screen description. They are mixing up apples with oranges. The only consistent way to discuss the holographic principle is to discuss the way qubits of information are encoded on a holographic screen and whatever the observer that arises in relation to the screen in its accelerated frame of reference observes in its own world as images of things are projected from the screen to the observer’s point of view. The projected images of things aren’t really real since they can be reduced to qubits of information encoded on the screen. Only the observer and its screen should be discussed. The images of things that appear in the bulk are only an illusion created by holographic projection.
The second mistake is to assume thermal equilibrium. Physicists assume thermal equilibrium because they are limited in terms of what they can discuss. They can only discuss an isolated simple system like a hydrogen atom, a planetary orbit, or an isolated black hole. To discuss anything more complicated they have to assume thermal equilibrium, but the physical universe is not at thermal equilibrium, and so will exhibit levels of complexity that they just can’t discuss.
The non-thermal equilibrium nature of the universe is the nature of life. Life can only come into existence in a thermal gradient since it must feed off of the flow of energy that flows through that thermal gradient. When physicists assume thermal equilibrium they’re assuming a single physical mechanism or theory of everything that describes everything that can appear to happen in the universe. They’re restricting the potentialities of the universe to a single physical mechanism. That’s why they have to postulate a multiverse theory in order to recover infinite potentialities, but even the potentialities of a single universe are infinite when consciousness is deciding which potentialities to express. There are an infinite number of physical mechanisms or theories of everything that consciousness can choose to operate in the universe, which is why the physical universe will never be at thermal equilibrium. Consciousness can choose a new physical mechanism to operate in the universe anytime it wants to and create the conditions of non-thermal equilibrium that are conducive for the expression of life so that consciousness can have the experience of living a life in the virtual reality world that it creates for itself. In its own creative process of creating that world, consciousness will express any potentiality it has to in the sense of a physical mechanism or theory of everything that is conducive to living that life.
Physicists argue that there is a single observer-independent objective reality out there that all observers can observe and agree upon as they make their observations, but this is only a flaw or logical contradiction in their argument. This is the same mistake physicists make over and over again due to sloppy thinking. To even ask the question of what appears to happen inside an event horizon versus what appears to happen outside an event horizon requires a meticulous definition of the frame of reference of the observer. What appears to happen can only be defined from the point of view of the observer that makes the observation. What appears to happen from one point of view is not the same as what appears to happen from another point of view. In other words, there is no such thing as an objective reality out there that all observers will agree upon, only many different subjective realities that depend on the point of view of the observer that makes the observation. There is no such thing as an objective reality that is invariant for all observers. Every observer observes its own observer-dependent subjective reality. This conclusion is so obvious it almost seems trivial. Can anyone observe your own private thoughts except for you?
People who work in neuroscience would like us to believe that brain activity creates our thoughts since they can show a correlation between certain kinds of brain activity and certain kinds of thoughts, but this is a fallacy based on unsound scientific reasoning. A correlation gives no proof of causation, and observing brain activity is most definitely not the same as observing a thought. The only way science can give any evidence for cause and effect is through prediction. If a scientific theory can predict future events with a high degree of accuracy, that is strong evidence for a cause and effect. The only science that is able to perform this trick is theoretical physics. A theory like the law of gravity can predict the location of a planet in its orbit around the sun at future moments in time with a high degree of accuracy if the planet’s location is known at some past moment in time. No science other than theoretical physics can make such predictions, and so no other branch of science can say anything important about cause and effect. At most, other branches of science can only show a correlation between events, but that is not evidence that one event caused another event. Our thoughts will always remain private to us as we observe them, no matter what people in neuroscience say about the role brain activity plays in creating our thoughts. No one can predict our thoughts, and no one other than ourselves can observe our own thoughts. Our thoughts are a part of our own subjective reality. Even theoretical physics with its evidence for cause and effect through the prediction of future events no longer supports the false idea held by so many scientists that there is a single observer-independent objective reality out there that we can all independently observe and agree upon as we make our observations. Modern physics with the holographic principle is telling us that every observer observes its own observer-dependent subjective reality. Every observer observes its own holographic world. That holographic world can only arise in the observer’s own accelerated frame of reference. The holographic principle also tells us that everything is the cause of everything else in a holographic world since all the qubits of information encoded on a holographic screen are entangled. At most, only a consensual reality is shared by many observers when their respective holographic worlds overlap in the sense of a Venn diagram and share information. The holographic principle tells us that the observer’s own subjective reality can only arise in its own frame of reference.
Whatever is observed by an observer in its own observer-dependent holographic world depends on the frame of reference of the observer. Whose point of view are we talking about when we describe what appears to happen from that particular point of view? Unless we frame the question in this way, we’re only spouting nonsense due to sloppy thinking. We’re making the same mistake almost all physicists make when they falsely assume that there is only a single observer-independent objective reality that is invariant for all observers and that all observers will agree upon as they make their observations. Even the apparent existence of a particle is not observer-independent, as is demonstrated by Hawking radiation. From the point of view of a stationary observer that hovers outside the event horizon of a black hole, particles of Hawking radiation appear to exist, but for a freely falling observer that falls through the event horizon, particles of Hawking radiation do not appear to exist. In reality, every observer creates its own observer-dependent subjective reality from its own point of view, but then what is the true nature of the observer? To answer this question requires a discussion not of physics, but metaphysics. What is the true nature of the observer’s existence? A number of metaphysical traditions, like the Tao, Zen, and Advaita Vedanta, attempt to give a conceptual answer to this question, but ultimately this question can only be answered by an observer’s own direct experience of the true nature of its existence, and not by any concept that an observer can ever have about itself.
The holographic principle is really quite simple. The purpose of discussing the physical world in terms of the holographic principle in this article is to put the nondual conceptualization of reality called Advaita Vedanta into a scientific framework. The most advanced version of this nondual conceptualization of reality is described by Nisargadatta Maharaj in I Am That. The purpose of this discussion is to fulfill Nisargadatta’s final wish that the awakening process, as he described it, be translated into scientific terms. It’s possible to make a one to one correspondence with the way Nisargadatta and other enlightened beings have described their awakening process and what the holographic principle is telling us. The physics isn’t really anything fundamental, but by the way the physics is expressed in terms of very general principles of potentiality, the physics is pointing to something, actually the absolute nothingness of the void, that is fundamental.
Nisargadatta’s Final Wish
Nisargadatta at the end of his life expressed his final wish that his conceptual discussions of the nature of the awakening process become scientific concepts. Just like all scientists, all science is part of the virtual reality, but that doesn’t mean that science is wrong when it says the world is a holographic world. A holographic character in a holographic world can realize that it’s living in a holographic world because the consciousness present for that holographic character can have that realization, just as Neo in the Matrix can realize he’s living in a virtual reality. Consciousness isn’t really a part of that holographic world. Consciousness is always out in the audience and is outside, only watching as the holographic movie of that world plays on a holographic screen.
Consciousness only believes it is a part of the holographic movie it is watching when it identifies itself with its holographic character in the movie. The important distinction is the consciousness watching the holographic movie is a divided presence of consciousness, which is called I Am, the Self, Atman, the witness, the spirit of God, or whatever else we want to call it. Anytime it wants to, a divided presence of consciousness can stop watching the movie and return to its true undivided state of nondual reality, but then it knows nothing. Nothing is known, nothing is done and nothing exists in that ultimate undivided and unlimited state of pure consciousness because that nondual absolute nothingness is what ultimately exists at the ground level of existence.
Nisargadatta has given an exquisitely detailed description of this state of affairs. Through his direct experiences, he has described a holographic world in exquisite detail. He also discussed the nature of nondual reality. What’s odd is that his descriptions are so universally ignored by the same people that revere him as a saint. What is it that people don’t want to know?
Nondual reality emotionally creates dualistic reality like the virtual reality of the Matrix so that it can communicate with itself. This kind of verbal communication can only appear to come into existence when emotions are expressed, which is literally how the world is created as the spirit of God moves over the face of the deep. Without that motion, there is only the darkness of the deep, the void, or the formless nothingness of pure consciousness that is truly alone since it is All-One. It has No-self because it has nothing to perceive in a subject-object relation of self and other.
At the ground level of the ultimate nature of existence nothing is known because that nothingness is what ultimately exists. The only way the kind of verbal communication that we experience in the world is even possible is if nondual reality creates a virtual reality for itself to communicate within, and that creation is always emotional. Creation is literally the spirit of God (Atman, the Self, I Am, the witness, or whatever else we want to call it) moving over the face of the deep, which is a holographic screen that allows a holographic world to appear to come into existence, but that holographic world is no more real than the virtual reality of the Matrix.
The irony is that science and the mathematics of modern physics that underlies all of science is just as much a part of the virtual reality as is anything else. Nisargadatta expressed his final wish during the last days of his life that the nature of nondual reality, or more specifically, the journey of awakening that takes one to the direct experience of nondual reality, be discussed in scientific terms. Nisargadatta was fully enlightened and truth realized, and yet he didn’t spend all of his time getting lost in the void in some catatonic or Samadhi trance of experiencing nothingness. He discussed the nature of nonduality in conceptual terms, and expressed his final wish that these concepts become scientific concepts. Of course, his comments were as much a part of dualistic reality as anything anyone else can say. It’s all dualism. Take away dualism and there is only the absolute nothingness of nondual reality, but like a roadmap, the only way anyone can point to the non-conceptual nature of nondual reality is by discussing it in conceptual terms.
Maybe that’s the reason nondual reality creates dualistic reality. McKenna says dualistic reality is an amusement park, and that’s certainly part of it, but maybe it’s also created so that nondual reality can communicate with itself about the true nature of what it really is. McKenna calls that communication truth-talk in the dreamstate, but even that talk is just another ride in the park.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
And the earth was without form and void
And darkness was upon the face of the deep
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters
And God said ‘Let there be light’; and there was light
And God saw the light, that it was good
And God divided the light from the darkness
Never the spirit was born,
The spirit shall cease to be never,
Never was time it was not.
End and beginning are dreams.
The unreal has no being.
The real never ceases to be.
Now I Am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
In the knowledge of the Atman, which is a dark night to the ignorant,
The recollected mind is fully awake and aware.
The ignorant are awake in their sense life, which is darkness to the sage–Bhagavad Gita
In the silence and the void
Standing alone and unchanging
Ever present and in motion
I do not know its name
Call it Tao
Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea
Returning is the motion of the Tao
It returns to nothingness
It leads all things back to the great oneness
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations
These two spring from the same source
This appears as darkness
Darkness within darkness
The gate to all mystery–Tao-Te-Ching
The great path has no gates
Thousands of roads enter it
When one passes through this gateless gate
One walks the universe alone–Mu-mon
Empty yourself of everything
The man of Tao remains unknown.
Perfect virtue produces nothing.
No-self is true self
And the greatest man is nobody–Chuang Tzu
Truly, I have attained nothing from total enlightenment-Buddha
Without form there is no desire
Without desire there is tranquility
Therefore the sage seeks freedom from desire
Being at one with the Tao is eternal
And though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away
Because there is no place for death to enter-Tao-Te-Ching
Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing
We are such stuff as dreams are made on
And our little life is rounded with a sleep
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil-Shakespeare
That which permeates all, which nothing transcends, and which like the universal space around us fills everything completely from within and without, that Supreme non-dual Brahman
That thou art
Brahman is the only truth, the world is illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Atman and Brahman-Shankara
He must dare to leap into the Origin so as to live by the Truth and in the Truth, like one who has become one with it. He must become a pupil again, a beginner; conquer the last and steepest stretch of the way, undergo new transformation. If he survives its perils then is his destiny fulfilled; face to face he beholds the unbroken Truth, the Truth beyond all truths, the formless Origin of origins, the Void which is the All; is absorbed into it and from it emerges reborn-Eugen Herrigel
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“I cannot live with myself any longer”. This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with. Maybe, I thought, only one of them is real.
I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words ‘resist nothing’, as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void.
I knew that something profoundly significant had happened to me. I understood that the intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so complete that this false, suffering self immediately collapsed, just as if a plug had been pulled out of an inflatable toy. What was left was my true nature as the ever-present ‘I am’: consciousness in its pure state prior to identification with form. Later I also learned to go into that inner timeless and deathless realm that I had originally perceived as a void and remain fully conscious-Eckhart Tolle
I discovered the secret of the sea in meditation upon a dewdrop-Kahlil Gibran
When the joy of my own emptiness began to wane I decided to rejuvenate it by spending some solitary time gazing into my empty self. Though the center of self was gone, I was sure the remaining emptiness, the silence and joy, was God Himself. Thus on one occasion, with full hedonistic deliberation, I settled myself down and turned my gaze inward. Almost immediately the empty space began to expand, and expanded so rapidly it seemed to explode; then, in the pit of my stomach I had the feeling of falling a hundred floors in a non-stop elevator, and in this fall every sense of life was drained from me. The moment of landing I knew: When there is no personal self, there is also no personal God. I saw clearly how the two go together-and where they went, I have never found out-Bernadette Roberts
Now she’s in freefall. At the precise moment of impact, the planet will disappear, and nothing will take its place. Her freefall won’t end, but it will no longer feel like falling because there will no longer be anything to reference it against. This is where dual awareness ends. From then on she will live in boundless awareness, never again able to differentiate between self and non-self. Abiding non-dual awareness.
Truth is one, is non-dual, is infinite, is one-without-other. Truth is dissolution, no-self, unity. There’s nothing to say about it, nothing to feel about it, nothing to know about it. You are true or you’re a lie, as in ego-bound, as in dual, as in asleep.
The truth of the situation is that eventually, there’s nothing. Infinity. Eternity. The void.
Like a child flicking a switch that turns the world off like a light. What can you say when the thing that ends isn’t within a context, but context itself?
There is the place where all the paradoxes disappear and where no questions remain, but there’s no point trying to describe this place.
That’s where I am now. Empty space is my reality. The void. No-self. I abide in non-dual, non-relative awareness.
Come see for yourself-Jed McKenna
We call Buddha the awakened one. This awakening is really the cessation of inner dreaming. When there is no dreaming you become pure space. This non-dreaming consciousness is what is known as enlightenment.
The inner emptiness itself is the mystery.
When the inner space is there, you are not.
When you dissolve, the inner emptiness is there.
When you are not, the mystery will be revealed.
You will not be a witness to the mystery, you will be the mystery.
If you go on inquiring ‘Who am I?’ you are bound to come to the conclusion that you are not. This is an inquiry to dissolve. There is no answer. Only the question will dissolve. There will be no one to ask ‘Who am I?’ And then you know.
When the ‘I’ is not, the real ‘I’ opens. When the ego is not, you are for the first time encountering your being. That being is void.
You fall into an abyss, and the abyss is bottomless: you go on falling. That is why Buddha has called this nothingness emptiness. There is no end to it. Once you know it, you also have become endless. At this point Being is revealed: then you know who you are, what is your real being, what is your authentic existence.
That Being is void-Osho
The door that locks you in is also the door that lets you out.
I Am is the door. Stay with it until it opens. It is always open, but you are not at it.
You are and I am, but only as points in consciousness.
Nothing perceivable is real. Only the onlooker is real, call him Self or Atman. That which makes you think that you are a human is not human. It is a dimensionless point of consciousness.
All you can say about yourself is I Am.
At the root of my being is pure awareness, a speck of intense light. This speck, by its nature, radiates and creates pictures in space and events in time, effortlessly and spontaneously.
I see only consciousness, and know everything to be but consciousness, as you know the pictures on the cinema screen to be but light.
Once you realize that there is nothing in this world which you can call your own you look at it from the outside as you look at a play on the stage or a picture on the screen. To know the picture as the play of light on the screen gives freedom from the idea that the picture is real. In reality I only look. Whatever is done is done on the stage. Joy and sorrow, life and death, they are real to the man in bondage. To me they are all in the show, as unreal as the show itself.
It is enough to shift attention from the screen onto oneself to break the spell.
To the Self the world is but a passing show. The world just sprouts into being out of nothing and returns to nothing. As long as the Self is merely aware, there is no problem.
You can stop it any moment by switching off attention.
You make it possible by giving it attention.
All you can do is to shift the focus of consciousness beyond the mind.
To be born means to create a world around yourself as the center.
You are that point of consciousness.
By your movement the world is ever created.
Stop moving and there will be no world.
Delve deeply into the sense I Am and you will discover that the perceiving center is universal. All that happens in the universe happens to you, the silent witness. Whatever is done is done by you, the universal and inexhaustible energy.
There can be no universe without the witness, no witness without the universe.
You are the source of reality, a dimensionless center of perception that imparts reality to whatever it perceives, a pure witness that watches what is going on and remains unaffected.
It is only imagination and self-identification with the imagined that encloses and converts the inner watcher into a person.
The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding.
In reality there is no such thing.
Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession.
In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying itself.
The world you can perceive is a very small world, entirely private. The world is but a reflection of imagination. Take it to be a dream and be done with it. What you call survival is but the survival of a dream. By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature you create so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream.
Some go on a journey and come back, some never leave. What difference does it make since they travel in dreamlands, each wrapped up in his own dream. Only the waking up is important.
Once you have seen that you are dreaming, you shall wake up, but you do not see because you want the dream to continue. A day will come when you long for the ending of the dream. You become willing to pay any price. The price will be dispassion and detachment, the loss of interest in the dream.
I am like a cinema screen, clear and empty.
The pictures pass over it and disappear, leaving it as clear and empty as before.
The screen intercepts and reflects the pictures. These are lumps of destiny, but not my destiny; the destinies of the people on the screen.
The character will become a person when he begins to shape his life instead of accepting it as it comes-identifying himself with it.
All this I perceive quite clearly, but I am not in it.
I feel myself as floating over it, aloof and detached.
There is also the awareness of it all and a sense of immense distance as if the body and the mind and all that happens to them were somewhere far out on the horizon.
To myself I Am neither perceivable nor conceivable.
There is nothing I can point out and say “this I am”.
Everything is a play of ideas. In the state free from ideation nothing is perceived. The root idea is I Am. It shatters the state of pure consciousness and is followed by the innumerable sensations and perceptions, feelings and ideas which in their totality constitute God’s world. The I Am remains as the witness, but it is by the will of God that everything happens.
At the root of all creation lies desire.
The projecting power is imagination prompted by desire.
Desire and imagination foster and reinforce each other.
All limited existence is imaginary.
Even space and time are imaginary.
Pure being, filling all and beyond all, is not limited.
All limitation is imaginary.
Only the unlimited is real.
The totality of all mental projections is the Great Illusion.
When I look beyond the mind I see the witness.
Beyond the witness is infinite emptiness and silence.
Awareness comes as if from a higher dimension.
The witness that stands aloof is the watchtower of the real, the point at which awareness, inherent in the unmanifested, contacts the manifested.
Find the immutable center where all movement takes birth. Be the axis at the center, not whirling at the periphery. Nothing stops you except fear. You are afraid of impersonal being.
Be aware of being conscious and seek the source of consciousness.
In pure being consciousness arises.
In consciousness the world appears and disappears.
Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality.
The center is a point of void and the witness a point of pure awareness; they know themselves to be as nothing.
But the void is full to the brim.
It is the eternal potential as consciousness is the eternal actual.
In reality only the Ultimate is. The rest is a matter of name and form. As long as you cling to the idea that only what has name and shape exists the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. Names and shapes are hollow shells. What is real is nameless and formless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness.
The witness is both real and unreal, the last remnant of illusion, the first touch of the real. The moment you say I Am, the entire universe comes into being.
The state of pure witnessing is like space, unaffected by whatever it contains.
You see yourself in the world, while I see the world in myself. To you, you get born and die, while to me, the world appears and disappears. It is your imagination that misleads you. There is a deep contradiction in your attitude which you do not see.
The source of consciousness cannot be an object in consciousness.
To know the source is to be the source. When you realize that you are not the person, but the pure and calm witness, and that fearless awareness is your very being, you are the being.
The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not the person. You are always the Supreme, which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person.
The objects in the world are many, but the eye that sees them is one. The higher always appears as one to the lower and the lower as many to the higher.
The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in it. When I cease caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no purpose. It appears exactly as it looks, but there is no depth in it nor meaning.
The world is but a mistaken view of reality, unreal to its core.
The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it will destroy the world in which you live.
In the end you get fed up with the waste of time and energy.
When you refuse to play the game you are out of it.
From my point of view everything happens by itself, quite spontaneously.
I do nothing. I just see them happen.
What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world can be said to appear but not to be. It is your memory that makes you think that the world continues. Memory creates the illusion of continuity. I see the world as it is, a momentary appearance in consciousness.
Some unknown power acts and you imagine that you are acting. You are merely watching what happens.
As long as there is the sense of identity with the body, frustration is inevitable. It is because of your illusion that you are the doer.
As long as you have the idea of influencing events, liberation is not for you. The very notion of doership, of being a cause, is bondage.
There is no such thing as free will. Will is bondage. You identify yourself with your desires and become their slave.
Desire for embodied existence is the root-cause of trouble.
To imagine that you are in control is the aberration of the body-mind. There is a universal power that is in control. The illusion of personal control is in the mind only. Stand without desire and fear, relinquishing all control. This is the shortest way to reality.
One becomes self-conscious only when caught in the conflict between pleasure and pain, which demands choice and decision. The personal self by its very nature is constantly pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. The ending of this pattern is the ending of the self. The ending of the self with its desires and fears enables you to return to your real nature.
When you are in dead earnest, you bend every incident, every second of your life, to your purpose. You do not waste time and energy on other things. You are totally dedicated, call it one-pointedness of the mind.
The unreal appears to be real only because you believe in it. You impart reality to it by taking it to be real. Doubt it and it ceases.
It is disinterestedness that liberates. If you lose interest, you break the emotional link that perpetuates the bondage.
There is no such thing as an expression of reality. Neither action nor feeling nor thought express reality. I know that life itself is only a make-believe. I just watch events happening, knowing them to be unreal.
My life is a succession of events just like yours. Only I Am detached and see the passing show as a passing show, while you stick to things and move along with them.
What you call survival is but the survival of a dream. Death is preferable to it. There is a chance of waking up.
As life before death is but imagination, so is life after death. The dream continues.
The realized man is beyond life and death. Life and death appears to him but a way of expressing movement in the immovable, change in the changeless. He has died before his death and he saw that there was nothing to be afraid of. The moment you know your real being you are afraid of nothing.
Death gives freedom. To be free in the world you must die to the world.
Self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage.
Your attachment is your bondage.
There is trouble only when you cling to something.
It is your desire to hold onto it that creates the problem. Let go.
When you hold onto nothing, no trouble arises.
Freedom means letting go.
Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything.
All attachment implies fear, for all things are transient.
Fear makes one a slave.
Freedom from attachment is natural when one knows one’s true being.
You create bondage when you desire and fear and identify yourself with your feelings.
You identify yourself with your desires and become their slave.
Your bonds are self-created as chains of attachment.
Cut the knot of self-identification
You must begin by being the dispassionate observer. Then only will you realize your full being.
Only in complete self-negation is there a chance to discover our real being.
The urge must come from within as a wave of detachment.
The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst.
Destroy the wall that separates; the I-am-the-body idea.
Investigate your world, apply your mind to it, examine it critically.
Scrutinize every idea about it.
Everything must be scrutinized and the unnecessary ruthlessly destroyed.
There cannot be too much destruction.
For in reality nothing is of value.
Seeing the false as false is meditation.
Meditation is discriminating the true from the false.
Discrimination will lead to detachment.
You gain nothing.
You leave behind what is not your own and find what you have never lost:
Your own being.
Giving up is the first step. The real giving up is in realizing that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own. Give up all and you gain all.
Then life becomes what it was meant to be: Pure radiation from an inexhaustible source.
In that light the world appears dimly like a dream.
Liberation is never of the person, it is always from the person.
The difference between the person and the witness is as between not knowing and knowing oneself.
You can see a person but you are not a person.
There is no such thing as a separate person. Everything is the cause of everything. Everything is as it is because the entire universe is as it is.
The entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing. Nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is. Everything is as it is because the universe is as it is. The universe is not bound by its contents because its potentialities are infinite.
The universal trend towards balance, harmony and unity, at every moment, whatever is happening, is always for the best.
The law of balance rules supreme.
Every action creates a reaction, which balances and neutralizes the action. There is a continuous cancelling out, and in the end it is as if nothing happened.
By itself nothing has existence
The dissolution of personality is always followed by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off.
The reward of Self-knowledge is freedom from the personal self.
Know yourself as you are. Stay with the sense I Am.
Wherever you go, at all times, you carry with you the sense of being present and aware, here and now. It means that you are independent of space and time. Space and time are in you, not you in them. It is only your self-identification with the body, limited in space and time, that gives you a sense of limitation. In reality, you are limitless.
Your world is created with the emergence of the I Am idea. In your world everything has a beginning and an end. Timeless being is entirely in the now.
Once you are well established in the now, you have nowhere else to go.
Externalization is the first step in liberation. Step away and look. Separate yourself and watch. The physical events will go on happening, but in themselves they have no importance.
Seeing that you are not the person you take yourself to be, step out and look from the outside.
We have enclosed ourselves in a cloud of personal desires and fears, images and thoughts, ideas and concepts.
Everyone sees the world through the idea one has of oneself. As you think your Self to be, so you think your world to be. If you imagine your Self as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you and you will experience desire and fear. Your own creative power projects on it a picture and all your questions refer to the picture.
Your questions are about a non-existing person. Realize that whatever you think yourself to be is just a stream of events; that whatever happens, comes and goes, is not real; that you alone are, the changeless among the changeful. Separate the observed from the observer and abandon false identifications. Be a fully awakened witness of the field of consciousness.
Whatever you perceive is not you. It is there in the field of consciousness, but you are not the field and its contents.
When the mind is quiet we come to know ourselves as the pure witness.
We withdraw from the experience and stand apart in pure awareness.
The personality continues, but its self-identification with the witness snaps.
As long as you take yourself to be a person, a body and a mind, separate from the stream of life, having a will of its own, pursuing its own aims, you are living merely on the surface and whatever you do will be short-lived and of little value, mere straw to feed the flames of vanity.
As long as you are locked up with your mind and ego, you cannot go further. Were you really at war with your ego, you would question its reality. You don’t question because you are not really interested. You are moved by the pleasure-pain principle, fear and desire, which is your ego. You are going along with your ego, not fighting against it. You are not even aware how totally swayed you are by personal considerations. Be in revolt against your ego, for the ego narrows and distorts. It is the worst of all tyrants. It dominates you completely.
Struggle to find out what you are in reality. To know what you are you must first investigate and know what you are not. Discover all that you are not: body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that. Nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. The clearer you understand that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being.
If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being human should be discarded. Abandon all self-identifications, abandon all self-concern, abandon every desire. Stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now. You need absolutely nothing.
Nothing stands in the way of your liberation here and now except for your being more interested in other things. You must see through them as mere mental errors.
Moments when one feels empty and estranged are desirable moments, for it means the soul has cast its moorings and is sailing for distant places.
There is a vastness beyond the farthest reaches of the mind. That vastness is my home; that vastness is myself.
As long as you are interested in your present way of living, you will shirk from the final leap into the unknown.
You must begin by being the dispassionate observer. Then only will you realize your full being. As long as you are enmeshed in the tribulations of a particular personality, you can see nothing beyond it. Ultimately you will come to see that you are neither the particular nor the universal. You are beyond both.
Everything is depicted in the pictures on the screen, including the person you take yourself to be; nothing in the light. You are the light only. You are the pure light appearing as a picture on the screen and becoming one with it.
Yours is the power of perception, not what you perceive. Whatever you are conscious of, is not you. Yours is the cinema screen, the light and the seeing power, but the picture is not you.
In reality nothing happens. Nothing happens to space itself. In pure consciousness nothing ever happens. Onto the screen of the mind destiny forever projects its pictures, and thus illusion constantly renews itself. The pictures come and go as light intercepted by ignorance. See the light and disregard the pictures.
You can spend an eternity looking elsewhere for truth, all in vain. You must begin in yourself, with yourself. Realize that your world is only a reflection of yourself. All you need is to stop searching outside what can only be found within.
Turn within. I Am you know. Be with it all the time, until you revert to it spontaneously. There is no simpler and easier way.
By its very nature the mind is outwardly turned; it always tends to seek for the source of things among the things themselves. To be told to look for the source within is the beginning of a new life.
To become free your attention must be drawn to the witness.
The point of I Am is the bridge between the watcher and its dream.
I Am both inside and outside the dream, but what I see in dream, I am not.
First we must know ourselves as witnesses only, dimensionless and timeless centers of observation, and then realize that immense ocean of pure awareness.
On the surface of the ocean of consciousness, names and forms are transitory waves. Only consciousness has real being, not its transformations.
Every moment returns to its source, just as every wave subsides into the ocean.
Realization is in discovering the source and abiding there.
To know the source is to be the source.
To the mind the light of consciousness appears as darkness. It can be known only through its reflections. The highest state of awareness is to be the point of light tracing the world.
Beyond the highest state of awareness is to be the source of light.
The timeless and spaceless reality is undifferentiated, the infinite potentiality, the source. It cannot be perceived, but can be experienced as ever witnessing the witness, perceiving the perceiver, the origin and end of all manifestation, the root of time and space.
As long as you are enmeshed in the tribulations of a particular personality, you can see nothing beyond it. Ultimately you will come to see that you are neither the particular nor the universal. You are beyond both.
The witness-consciousness is the reflection of the real in the mind. The real is beyond.
The witness is the door through which you pass beyond.
Between desires and freedom from all desires is an abyss which must be crossed. Cross the door and go beyond.
Go back to that state of pure being, the I Am in its purity before it became contaminated with false self-identifications. Abandon them all. Focus the mind on pure being. In it all disappears: myself, the life I live, the world around me. Only peace and unfathomable silence remains.
All that is, lives and moves and has its being in consciousness.
I Am in and beyond that consciousness.
I Am in it as the witness.
I Am beyond it as Being.
The Supreme state neither comes nor goes. It is.
It is a timeless state, ever present.
In the timeless state there is no Self, no I Am, no witness.
Awareness is beyond all.
Awareness is primordial; it is the original state.
Awareness is undivided, aware of itself.
Before the mind happens, I Am.
Before all beginnings, after all endings, I Am.
All has its being in the I Am that shines in every living being.
The dreamer is one.
I Am beyond all dreams.
I Am the light in which all dreams appear and disappear.
In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, but making everything shine with the light of consciousness.
Unperceived, it causes perception. Being nothing it gives birth to all being. It is the immovable background of motion.
The Supreme reality is the void beyond being and non-being, beyond consciousness.
Reality is essentially alone.
To know that nothing is, is true knowledge.
Do nothing. There is nothing to do. Just be.
To be, you must be nobody.
You make yourself mortal by taking yourself to be a body.
That which is alive in you is immortal.
The Supreme reality is the void beyond being and non-being, beyond consciousness. There is no journey to Supreme reality. One is undeceived only. One is as one always is. One knows nothing, wants nothing, is nothing.
The experience of the inner void is an explosion into reality.
Realization is sudden and irreversible. You rotate into a new dimension.
You see everything as it is. The world of illusions is left behind.
One is left without questions; no answers are needed.
There is nothing left to do. One’s work is done.
The I Am in movement creates the world.
The I Am at peace becomes the Absolute.
For the path of return naughting oneself is necessary.
My stand I take where nothing is.
To the mind it is all darkness and silence.
It is deep and dark, mystery beyond mystery.
It is, while all else merely happens.
It is like a bottomless well, whatever falls into it disappears.
-Nisargadatta Maharaj
Scientific References
Quanta Magazine June 6, 2023 video in which Lenny Susskind proposes a second law of quantum complexity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLOHdW7dLug
Tom Banks (2018): Why the Cosmological Constant is a Boundary Condition. arXiv:1811.00130
Raphael Bousso (2002): The Holographic Principle. arXiv:hep-th/0203101
Antonio Damasio (1999): The Feeling of What Happens (Harcourt Brace)
Amanda Gefter (2014): Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn (Random House)
Amanda Gefter (2012): Cosmic Solipsism. FQXi Essay
Rebecca Goldstein (2005): Incompleteness (W W Norton)
Brian Greene (2000): The Elegant Universe (Vintage Books)
N. Gregory Hamilton (1988): Self and Others (Jason Aronson)
Gerard ‘t Hooft (2000): The Holographic Principle. arXiv:hep-th/0003004
Ted Jacobson (1995): Thermodynamics of Space-time. arXiv:gr-qc/9504004
Stuart Kauffman (1995): At Home in the Universe (Oxford University Press)
J Madore (1999): Non-commutative Geometry for Pedestrians. arXiv:gr-qc/9906059
Juan Maldacena (1997): The Large N Limit of Superconformal Field Theories and Supergravity. arXiv:hep-th/9711200
Nancy McWilliams (1994): Psychoanalytic Diagnosis (Guilford Press)
Roger Penrose (2005): The Road to Reality (Alfred A Knopf)
Roger Penrose (2000): The Large, the Small and the Human Mind (Canto)
Roger Penrose Interview: New Scientist, Nov 14, 2022
Lee Smolin (2001): Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (Basic Books)
Leonard Susskind (2008): The Black Hole War (Little, Brown and Company)
Leonard Susskind (1994): The World as a Hologram. arXiv:hep-th/9409089
A. Zee (2003): Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell (Princeton University Press)
Anton Zeilinger (1999): Experiment and the Foundations of Quantum Physics. Rev. Mod. Phys. 71, S288.
Nondual References
The Bhagavad-Gita (1909): Edwin Arnold trans. (Harvard Classics)
The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (1968) Burton Watson trans. (Columbia Press)
Plato’s Republic (2001) Benjamin Jowett trans. (Agora Publications)
Jed McKenna (2002, 2004, 2007): Spiritual Enlightenment Trilogy (Wisefool Press)
Jed McKenna (20013): Jed McKenna’s Theory of Everything (Wisefool Press)
Nisargadatta Maharaj (1973): I Am That (Acorn Press)
Nisargadatta Maharaj (1990): Prior to Consciousness (Acorn Press)
Osho (1974): The Book of Secrets (St Martin’s Griffin)
Osho (1977): The Search: Talks on the Ten Bulls of Zen (Tao Publishing)
Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki (1957): Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (Tuttle Publishing)
Bernadette Roberts (1993): The Experience of No-Self (State University of New York Press)
Eckhart Tolle (1997): The Power of Now (New World Library)
Lao Tsu (1989): Tao Te Ching. Gia-Fu Feng trans. (Vintage Books)
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