November 6, 2025 • 45 mins
Tracking Wisdom
Episode 35
The Consciousness Stack – Mapping a Substrate Model of Existence
Recorded - 09/01/25
DESCRIPTION
The salient point of our discussion centers on the conceptual framework we refer to as the "consciousness stack," which emerged from a dialogue involving artificial intelligence. We delve into the intricate layers that constitute our understanding of reality, positing that consciousness serves as the fundamental essence from which all material experience arises. Throughout our discourse, we explore the interplay between intellect and mystical experience, asserting that while intellectual exercises can enhance our understanding, they may simultaneously obstruct direct engagement with the mystical dimensions of existence. The conversation further traverses various philosophical paradigms, including those articulated by Tom Campbell and Donald Hoffman, as we attempt to delineate the mechanisms by which consciousness manifests into the tangible world. Ultimately, we invite our listeners to contemplate the profound implications of these ideas on their own experiences and perceptions.
Takeaways:
- In this episode, we explored the concept of a 'consciousness stack', which presents a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between consciousness and reality.
- We discussed how intellectual understanding can sometimes act as a barrier to experiencing mystical states, emphasizing the need for openness to transcend beyond conventional thought.
- The podcast highlights the importance of engaging in thought experiments to expand our perception and understanding of consciousness and existence.
- We examined the layers of reality, from pure awareness to the manifestation of matter, illustrating the complexity and interconnectedness of our experiences and perceptions.
- The conversation touched upon the significance of personal experience in shaping our understanding of consciousness, highlighting the value of both intellectual and experiential knowledge.
- Finally, we reflected on how our individual learning contributes to a collective evolution of consciousness, underscoring the fractal nature of existence and the pursuit of lower entropy.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
You're listening to theTracking Wisdom Podcast, exploring
the universal truths that wesee woven through culture, consciousness
and the human experience.
Good morning everybody, andwelcome back to another episode of
the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.My name is Ryan.
My name is Peter.
(00:23):
And today I wanted to sharesomething with you that I found really
interesting. This is whatwe're calling the consciousness stack
and was a result of aconversation I had with ChatGPT and
it yielded an illustration ofa model that kind of aligns with
some of the more computerbased models of what reality could
(00:47):
be. So we just talked aboutTom Campbell who discusses simulation,
and we've discussed DonaldHoffman a number of times who describes
a user interface kind of modeland, and I find those to be quite
interesting and useful in myown conceptualization of how consciousness,
(01:07):
if it is taken as fundamental,how out of that yields this material
experience, the hardenedstate, all those kinds of things.
So this I found to be aninteresting take on creating an illustration
for how that could work. Butbefore we dive into this, Peter and
I, we embrace the mysticalexperience. But mystical experience
(01:32):
doesn't come fromintellection. But what I found in
thinking about this is it maynot drive mystical experience, but
the intellect can be anobstruction or a barrier to mystical
experience. The egoic mind hasthoughts and beliefs, and if it's
too constrained to considerpossibilities of mystical experiences
(01:57):
and a world beyond, then it isa barrier. And so I think there is
value to engaging in theseintellectual exercises to open the
mind. And so what I'm offeringtoday isn't a description of anything
scientific. This isn't beingpresented as teaching or anything
(02:18):
like that. It's meant to be alittle bit of entertainment and tickling
the intellectual mind. I enjoyimagining these kinds of things.
I find it useful in my ownpractice. And maybe you will as well.
I appreciate what you'resaying about having a thought experiment
or an exercise to stretch themind and limber it up and make it
(02:38):
more flexible and lessconstrained and less closed and more
open. And I think in part it'sletting it know that we're going
to go out of the comfort zone.But here are some ideas to maybe
assuage the mind, right? Andthen I think later I'll want to talk
a little bit more maybe about Camel.
(02:58):
So a little context to thelistener. So, as I had said, this
came out of a conversation Iwas having with ChatGPT and ultimately
I posed the question, considera philosophical theoretical contemplation
from a consciousness firstmechanism whereby the conscious awareness
is the underlying essence ofall things. Taking that consciousness
(03:21):
first ontology whereconsciousness is to existence as
the Taoist to the way. Andimagine plausible mechanism for how
consciousness gives rise tothe whole show the space, time, matter,
feelings of solidity and such.And so it describes seven layers.
But the layers conceptuallyare infinite. So there's infinite
(03:44):
strata of filters and layersand information that would stack
conceptually on top of itself,adding depth and complexity to ultimately
give rise to what weexperience. But also what people
might call dimensions ormultiple universe scenarios. But
that there's no limitation asfar as what other kinds of experiences
(04:08):
and systems could be generatedin this model. The first layer, this
essence layer, is the pureawareness could be related to or
described as Dao or Brahman,or any other number of descriptions
or names for that fundamentalessence that underlies all things.
(04:28):
You could call itconsciousness however you want to
describe it. And its nature isinfinite and non local. There's a
timeless element to it. Theanalogy is the infinite ocean with
no waves. So it's purestillness, but holding the potential
for all motion. And what cameto mind is the imagery of God floating
(04:51):
over the waters in pre time orin the beginning, where the field
of awareness was still andinfinite and absolute. And that gives
rise to a second layer calleddifferentiation. And this is where
separation begins. And whatthat is is that the fundamental essence
(05:16):
begins to modulate. So thatgoes to the wave in the ocean kind
of analogy, where the wavesare individuations of the one essence.
What I realized was thatmodulation is that essence of this
versus that and that. It's thebase by which conditional and relational
(05:37):
logic can occur. So in ourbinary code, it's that this and that
kind of relationship thatgives rise to the complexity that
we see in computing. Thewaveform itself is an analog wave,
which actually has infinitepoints of information along its entire
waveform, which would giverise to essential infinite complexity.
(06:01):
Computational complexity, suchas the analog system would be constrained
within the material world withShannon's law and Planck's constant.
Where there is physicalbarriers and frictions that would
constrain the absolute natureof an infinite encoding. But if this
was in this second layer,which is before space and time and
(06:26):
the material rules and systemsthat dictate how things work here,
infinite potential andcapacity for information would have
no restrictions. After thatcomes a rule layer. This is the proto
laws. What I interpret this tobe is Tom Campbell's description
of rule sets, physics and ourunderstanding of the physical world
(06:50):
and nature and rules thatgovern it, lives in this layer, where
once information exists,relations and Patterns between them
naturally emerge. So this iswhat I'm thinking of as far as like
beginning with a high entropy.And then eventually coalescing into
a lower entropy. Intocoherence and boundaries. And that
(07:13):
the laws aren't created orimposed specifically. But that they're
consistent habits ofconsciousness interacting with itself.
So as consciousness has begunto modulate and have this sort of
information layer. Thepatterns begin to emerge through
more randomized interactions.Creating restrictions and rules that
(07:38):
ultimately govern the nextlayer, which would be space time
rendering protocol. Which isdescribed essentially as a coordinate
system. That consciousnessuses to organize experience. So space
and time isn't some sort ofcontainer or absolute. But that it
is an indexing system forindividuated experience. And it could
(08:01):
be rendered similar to like aVR engine. Where the scene in the
local experience. Is renderedas part of the observed. And interacted
with space. Not necessarilyrendered en masse. So once we have
space and time as an indexingsystem. We start exploring matter,
(08:23):
which I'll describe assolidity. So a condensing tangible
and self reinforcinginformational structure. So patterns
become self reinforcing. Andsolidity becomes a perception from
our perceiving faculties.Interaction with these patterns.
(08:43):
That solidity is a resistanceto change. The tactile sensation
is us sensing the pattern'sresistance to change. And different
patterns have varyingresistances to change. So we could
go from very fluid and mobile.To very rigid and solid. So ultimately
(09:05):
there is no actual substance.But that the substance we perceive
is patterns interacting in away that gives an illusion of solidity
to a perceiver. So we havespace and time. We have information,
we have rules, we have matter.Now we start discussing perceiving
faculties. So these are thesensors and mechanisms by which we
(09:29):
have been endowed to interactand interface. With this model. The
senses are part of theinterface. They're not outside the
interface. And they're tunedto detect narrow bands of possible
information patterns. Such assmell, such as hearing, such as taste,
such as infrared, if you're asnake, and so on. As we interact
(09:53):
through the interface withthese sensory inputs. The object
that we observe and theobserver meet in that moment. And
the experience crystallizes.Where there is both a material pattern
object. And the ultimateobserver experiencing that object
(10:15):
in that moment of space andtime. And that's where experience
manifests out of potential.And then the last layer described
was the interaction ofcausality. Where cause and effect
are rendered. Effects of therules and the patterns and the observations
all materializing. So in thebase layer, interactions could be
(10:38):
more Like a shared database.So that information is instant and
non local. So in a way thatkind of describes some of the what
we observe with quantum wherethings change at exceedingly long
distances instantaneously.Because the information database
is non local and can updateinstantly. But in space time, the
(11:00):
rendering imposes a sequentialand causal mechanism so that the
game as it is described stayscoherent to all players. So that
is the story that we live, thelinear sequence of cause and effect
that we perceive, but that atthe base layer, the data information
layer, these things are notbound in locality and they can update
(11:24):
essentially instantly in thatinfinite nonlinear space. How is
it that finite experience iscalled out of that? The imagined
mechanism was a fourdimensional addressing schema where
the coordinates for a givenexperience or time, however you want
(11:44):
to describe it, would startwith a domain id which describes
your specific rule set, thephysics and metaphysics that run
your universe system. So thatcould be considered similar to an
operating system. Then there'dbe a pattern vector, which is the
stable pattern within thatrule set, a state index, which is
(12:06):
the current condition andmoment that that pattern is existing.
And then there's theperspective key, and that's the,
the observer's relationship toall those components. And basically
the query would be able torender a time specific rule set,
specific pattern specificexperience that could be called out
(12:27):
of infinite potential. Theperspective key is the important
component that translates froman objective state into a subjective
experience. So I found thatinteresting. Did you have something
you wanted to respond to?
Well, talking about theperspective key and the perception
parameters made me think aboutsome recent experiences and how they
(12:51):
feed the goal oftranscendence. I think more than
just conceptualizing theboundaries of our physical reality
as we have been doing, talkingabout the ideas of how it could work,
but we also, in order toreally graduate, we have to have
experience in moving beyondthat or, I know, kind of like acquiring
(13:13):
the experience that allows usto be separate from it, to be separate
from it, not just imaginebeing separate from it or talk about
being separate from it. And soone of the things is this shedding
of localized perspective,which is a characteristic of physical
existence. It's veryintrinsic. It's part of the rule
set. It's a key perspectivekey. And this has come up for me
(13:36):
recently. No matter where youare, you're here. Like, you only
experience things from thelocation of your person, right? The
location of your head. And ifyou go over there, you're still here.
You're not in this physicallocation, you're in that location
over there where Your head iswhere your perceptions are. That's
your location. Your locationis always where your perception is.
(13:57):
I've had some recentexperience in dissociating from localized
perception. Not very strongly.I think it's not a very sophisticated
way, because I think what Ithink of as a dissociation or sophisticated
one is out of body experience,right? Which is something that's
still not in my experience.And the other thing which I probably
(14:20):
talked about at some pointbefore, which is much stronger, is
kind of the dissociation fromthe sensory inputs of. And this is
related, I think, toperspective because I think normally
the way we experience theworld through our senses and our
senses kind of define andconfirm our perspective location,
(14:44):
right? And so the experiencethat I've had in deep meditation
is recognizing my senses asseparate from my awareness and a
very clear experience of, oh,this is my visual sense, this is
my vision, this is my visualexperience, this is my auditory experience,
this is my tactile experience.And that they relate and I relate
(15:06):
to them, but they do notdefine me. And I'm not identifying
with. I see the cup and I seemy hand, and there's a sensory experience
associated with my hand or atactile sensory experience associated
with my hand. And also avisual sensory experience for the
cup. And the recognition thatjust because there's a tactile sensory
experience associated with myhand doesn't make that more me. I
(15:28):
guess what I'm trying to do isdescribe how this model can relate
to direct experiences.Obviously, people like Campbell report
extraordinary experiences liketraveling out of body and meeting
other entities, kinds of stufffar beyond. I mean, I can't speak
to that, but I just want toreport, like, oh, yeah, I do have
some direct experiencepointing to how these elements of
(15:52):
experience, these elements ofwhat we call the physical reality,
you know, generally we justcall reality. We don't specify. It's
like, this is what's real.What's real is, you know, the texture
of this thing and the weightof that thing and the color of this
thing. But, you know, really,they're elements of existence in
physical reality in thecontext of. I guess that's probably
(16:13):
the best way of putting it,the context of physical reality.
And that when you have anexperience of separating your awareness
from those things as identity,then it becomes more real and less
conceptualized that we'reoperating in the context of physical
reality. That was somethingthat keyed in when you went over
(16:35):
the address components concept.
So that was the framework.There's yet some more to discuss.
Specifically, our Access todifferent layers. And we've talked
about these supernatural kindsof experiences. So things like psi
phenomena is not asupernatural thing, but is the temporary
(17:00):
bypassing of the guardrails ofthe shared simulation.
So Campbell says the samething, that it's not supernatural.
But I think that's ignoringreally the shared meaning of natural.
So what we generally mean bynatural is following familiar laws.
And so in the sense that it'sbreaking the laws, it's unnatural.
(17:23):
I think that the point thatCampbell makes is just that our conception
of natural, our conception ofwhat the laws are, is slightly inaccurate.
And so these things aren'tbreaking the rules, they're breaking
what we think rules are. And Ithink that that's Campbell's point,
is that there's a continuum ofrules or perceived rules or rules
(17:45):
that we understand. And so inthe sense that you can move from
one to the other, it's allnatural, it's all part of reality.
But then again, in terms ofthe way we have the conversation,
like we're having thisconversation in physical reality.
And so in that sense, thesethings are outside of that reality.
It's a distinction of, Iguess, perception, like this idea
of degrees. And how common isthe experience to say that something
(18:11):
is natural or unnatural?Right. I guess really the accurate
term would be usual and unusual.
Yes.
Nothing at all is unnatural.If it can happen, it's natural. It's
just. It's unusual. You won'toften meet people who have that same
experience.
I think it's an importantpoint, and I think that this is the
reason I talk about it in thisway, is when we try and describe
(18:33):
it as natural or notsupernatural, it's in an effort to
break down the stigmas ofimpossibility. Right. So you were
absolutely correct, I think,in saying, well, it is supernatural
insofar as it's outside thenorm of experience. I think that's
a fair way to define it. Ithink that in part, it's to break
(18:57):
down those barriers of themind that we were talking about early
in the episode, saying thesethings aren't impossible, and they're
not necessarily even strangeor anomalous, so to speak, in its
essence, but in the frequencyof experience, they do come off as
anomaly. Is that fair?
Yeah. It all has to do withframes of reference. So if you have
(19:20):
brought yourself intosecondary frame of reference that
is outside of our physicalexperience, you've significantly
shifted your frame ofreference. That's a commonly shared
frame of reference. So fromthe shift shifted frame of reference,
there's no anomaly but foranyone in the standard frame of reference,
it's anomaly.
(19:40):
Yeah. The second thing Iwanted to bring up is why is it uncommon
and why would it beundesirable? And I think it goes
back to this sharedexperience. And in a way, the. I
guess I'll say purpose. Idon't know if that's the word I really
mean, but we've talked aboutbefore, this nature or desire to
(20:04):
experience is conceivably partof why all this came to be. Right.
Why do we not just live inthat first infinite layer? There's
no experience, there's nomovement and flow. And so if those
things like that debug mode,if it were the norm, would start
(20:25):
to break down at theexperience that we engage with the
experience of the mystical,the experience of that sort of supernatural
is only possible because wehave this norm, Right? If everything's
special, nothing's specialkind of thing.
That's interesting. Thattouches on another insight that I
(20:47):
have this morning. So whatyou're saying is, why is the debug
mode limited and not just wideopen? And the reason is to ensure
stability. And the reason thatyou want stability is that you need
that in order to contrast withthe experience of the mystical. Take.
(21:07):
Okay, so as you know, I'vebeen delving into Campbell more,
and I would say that thatessentially aligns. It's interesting
how your independentexploration parallels his work, of
course, the work of Hoffman,and of course, how he and Hoffman
parallel each other, as we'vementioned. And I think what's encouraging
is that the more independentinvestigations come to the same conclusions,
(21:33):
the more confidence we canhave in the conclusions. And so I
think that that's the pattern.I mean, that's our whole premise
here, right? Is that we'relooking for these underlying rules
or the perennial wisdom or theultimate truth. And it's like, okay,
so the more we find thesethings recurring, then the higher
confidence that we have in thevalidity of this as a potential absolute
(21:57):
truth. So going back to thefirst layer of this undifferentiated
infinity, as you say, it hasprofound roots in all kinds of traditions.
And you cited Old Testament ofmoving on the face of the deep. Right.
Which I love that becausehaven't thought, thought of that.
And it relates so closely tomy shared experience of, I don't
(22:19):
know, deep meditation ormystical contact, you know, and then
the next step being thismodulation. So this is straight from
Campbell very explicitlypostulates these two things in his
own building of the model. Sohe calls this undifferentiated auo,
which is absolute unlimitedoneness. He introduces that as a
(22:40):
term and says this is familiarfrom multiple traditions. And you
could say, oh, that's Shiva.Oh that's God. But in reality it
doesn't have to be asabsolute. It's apparently absolute.
When he describes, or we thinkof the absolute unlimited oneness,
it is that from theperspective of our physical reality.
(23:02):
And that what he demonstratesis that in absolute reality it actually
does not have to be unlimited.It only has to be unlimited from
our perspective in order toallow the generation of our universe.
He basically goes through whatwe would call ground of being, this
essence of what he calls theabsolute unlimited oneness. And he
(23:24):
shows you only have to go abunch of powers of 10 beyond what
we conceive to have thisapparently unlimitedness. But then
his next step is thisdifferentiation, this, this modulation
and the creation of the wave.So, so that's right on. And the,
the rule set is veryinteresting because as a physicist,
(23:46):
he walks it through reallyexplicitly and basically says the
speed of light is just thefundamental basic rule of our physical
reality, right? Which, oh, soI should say he moves it from AUO
to generating these waves andthese differentiated bits and expanding
the bit ness of it and growingthat out until it contains multiplicities.
(24:08):
And so then it becomes amanifold. So it moves from being
a one to being manifold, whichis interesting also because this
has come up repeatedly inconceptions of the divine. Right.
Well, is the divine one or isit manifold? And so now he's gotten
to a U M Absolute unlimitedmanifold or ohm, which is cute. And
(24:29):
so he then he describes howspeed of light is one of the rules
or the essential rule that Omcreated to start to define our physical
reality. And it just occurs tome that is very invocative of Let
there be light, where light isthe essential. I mean, it's very
interesting. And so that's nota connection that he makes, but when
(24:50):
I say it, it's like, oh myGod, how could you avoid that? Right?
And I guess what I'm pointingto is the recurrency of these themes
and then the idea of movinginto matter as being these self reinforcement
forcing patterns that ariseout of the rule set. What that suggested
to me was the reality ofphysical experience being solid.
(25:14):
And I wrote that matter,solidity and reality mean the same
things to us, and yet ouregoic self is that it is this self
reinforcing pattern, right?But we don't call it a physical reality,
but we recognize that it hasthis Persistence. And maybe that's
why people think it is part ofphysical reality, because it seems
(25:38):
physically real. It has thisquality of solidity and persistence
which then becomes the soul.Right? The soul is immortal even
though it's non physical. Andso you have this crossover almost
between physical reality andspiritual reality because of this
persistent pattern. And thenwe start looking for ways to make
(25:59):
it mean something in terms ofphysical reality. Like, well, how
does the soul work? How doesthe soul get reincarnated? And it's
like it doesn't in terms ofphysical reality. It's just the persistence
of pattern. Don't worry abouthow it fits into a body because the
body is just anotherpersistent pattern. These patterns
are associated. There's notone inside another necessarily. You
(26:20):
can construct patterns whereone pattern is spatially inside of
the other pattern, but itdoesn't have to be spatially inside
of it only has to beassociated with in some way. And
then you're talking about thesenses and the shared reality. And
you said separation, that'snot real. Like, even though everything
(26:41):
is not actually separated, itappears separated. And my, my note
was, well, it is separated inthis simulation. So we have to, I
think, be willing tocontinually return to shared reality
and not just, oh, it doesn'tmatter because we're not separate,
because we still have work todo in physical reality, even as pure
(27:02):
consciousness. And so that'sjust the caveat of, yeah, don't go
off the rails because nothingmatters, because it's all not real.
It's real. We're not doneplaying the game because we're not
all wise and benevolent andpure and whatever it is that we need
in order to naturallytranscend the game. There's some
(27:22):
tendency to learn about, aboutthe unreality of separation, the
unreality of physical reality,and then discount it as unvalued
and unfactual. When as far aswe know, there's a huge utility to
it for us as non physicalbeings. We're not just here randomly.
(27:43):
Given this physical rule set.I don't believe anymore that there's
an intentional individualisticdirection saying, you know, I'm going
to place you here in thissituation so that you can learn things
and become better. It's justthe way things are. But we are learning
and we do have kind of a driveto be better. And so this whole discussion
(28:05):
is useful as an exercise. Andwe have to be careful about being
too glib about just sayingeverything's relative. And that doesn't
matter. The reason we have tosay it's not real is because being
unrelentingly attached to theexperience of physical reality constrains
us too much. It prevents usfrom seeing things that we want to
(28:26):
see, and it can cause us todeny the reality of actual experience.
And so that's why we have tosay, oh, it's not real, or we have
to be able to see thatphysical existence isn't absolutely
real. Not because it doesn'tmatter, just with what we started
out the whole episode with thepurpose of expanding perception and
(28:48):
enabling us to learn thingsthat we can't learn if we're overly
constrained.
When you were discussing theinfinite, not having to be absolutely
infinite, it reminded me of anexcerpt in Conversations with God
where in a conversation, Godwas saying, I am all that you imagine
(29:09):
God is, and yet I am to that.To another, it's not constrained
in the way that we think of.Well, because we think of infinity
as a constraint.
Right? Right.
We imagine infinity, which isby definition unconstrained in this
box.
So one thing that I just readabout in book two of Campbell was
(29:31):
that from our layer ofreality, what he calls pmr, from
our physical matter reality,we can conceive of this outer layer,
but there's no way for us tomodel it. We can conceive that there
is something that we can'tconceive, and that's as far as we
can go. And so I'm guessingthat that's what we're scratching
(29:53):
with the mystical experience.So we start to have an idea, and
not just a conceptual idea,but a direct taste of all air beyond
the physical. When Ryan hadintroduced this chat conversation,
I had some concerns about,about how and why we were talking
about it. And I think I'mbeing heavily influenced by Campbell.
(30:16):
It does a good job explainingwhy we're here, which is not to say
that he's stating facts. Infact, the book is my big toe Theory
of everything. It's a theory,it's a model. It's a model that's
very, very well supported by alot of evidence, but that's all it
is. And so one of the thingsthat he says is, you know, it's important
that you not believe all thestuff I'm telling you. In fact, I
(30:36):
don't believe it either. He'sbuilding a working functional model.
And so it's not a question ofbelieving it. Right. It's a question
of matching the elements ofthe model to available evidence.
You advance with a littleconjecture, which is imagination,
but it's logical imagination.And then you reconfirm and you match
it to more evidence, and youadd that to the model because it
(30:56):
matches the evidence. Theother big point he makes is it's
called my big toe because it'smine, it's not yours. This is all
from my experience and myknowledge. And everybody has to have
their own experiences andbuild on this. And so the purpose
of my big toe is so that youcan develop your big toe. You can
develop a model ofinterpreting your experience. So
(31:19):
my concern with talking aboutthis stuff was our goal isn't to
try to tell people the waythings are. It's to try to share
our experiences and how we'reputting these things together in
such a way that we feel likewe're growing and becoming better.
Better in objective andsubjective ways. As we got into this
(31:41):
very conceptual explorationwith ChatGPT, that was my concern.
One of the things thatrelieved me was I had some insights
with my experience of drivingin. So I'm reacting to drivers who
are irritating me andfrightening me. And I was connecting
this to the idea of being inthe physical reality so that we can
have experiences to grow. AndI realized that this is part of my
(32:06):
growth is dropping thesehabitual thought patterns, which
I've talked about an awfullot. And I talk about it as conditioning
in terms of psychologicalconditioning and conditioning in
a larger sense. Thich NhatHanh called them habit energies.
And recently I've startedrecognizing it as a subroutine, just
a pattern that exists which isdeveloped as part of me, but it is
(32:27):
not me. And what I realizedwas a big part of the growth process
is learning to let go ofthings. I mean, this is pretty trite
bumper sticker philosophy,right? But it's a very key truth.
And so I realized that a veryimportant part of our development
is gaining a lot ofattachments. But then later on, it
(32:48):
becomes very important to beable to let go of those attachments.
And before we let go ofattachments, we have to learn discernment,
which is to say that some ofour attachments are constructive
and continue to be useful, andsome of them are not. And so then
we have to be able to let goof those ideas that are no longer
serving us. So one of thethings that Campbell talks about
(33:09):
is he introduces a term offundamental process, which is evolution.
But I think that byintroducing the term fundamental
process, he helps usconceptually dissociate it from biology.
I think growth and developmentare probably the terms that we should
use, but we like to use theterm learning. And then in our culture
Learning tends to be theaccumulation of knowledge. And in
(33:33):
the awakening sphere, there'sthis concern around the mind and
thinking and ideas andknowledge, right? And I think in
this process of development asan individuated portion of infinite
consciousness, what's reallymost important is experience. But
as humans in this context, theway we get there most is we actually
(33:56):
do accumulate a lot ofintellectual knowledge. That's what
gets us to the experiences.For most of us, accumulating more
knowledge helps us access moreexperiences. Not true for everybody,
but I think definitely truefor you and me. And I think that
the problem is when weprioritize intellectual knowledge
(34:18):
over experiential knowledge,and none of these are bad things,
it's just that we're sufferinga very bad imbalance, emphasizing
our thoughts and emphasizingour body, because our body and our
thoughts are the only thingsthat are real because they are us.
Like I am my thoughts and I ammy body and that's all that's real.
That's what we're trying toget away from. But it doesn't mean
that my thoughts and my bodyare bad. My thoughts in my body are
(34:42):
my tools in this reality tomove on. But in our growth process,
all of that helps us haveinsights which often come out of
subconscious and intuition.And those are specific terms that
have technical meanings orhave meanings in certain circles.
But basically they're theseprocesses that process all of our
(35:03):
accumulated knowledge into newknowledge, into new insights. So
it's not about throwing awayknowledge and ideas. It's just realizing
knowledge and ideas aren'tgoing to take you all the way. Don't
be so constrained to thefamiliar that you can't grow beyond
the familiar. And that's wheremost of us tend to exist most of
the time, is we're soconstrained by what's familiar that
(35:23):
we can't grow beyond it. Andthen we're stuck in this repetitive,
harmful, uncomfortable thingsthat we call life and suffering.
So are we equating or do weequate learning as part of evolution?
Is that kind of what we'resaying? Is there part of the same
process.
In the sense that learning isthe ability to retain a choice, right?
(35:44):
To memorize a choice of is itone or zero? Yeah. So Campbell talks
about the fundamental processarising very, very early. And it's
all built around entropy andthe resistance to entropy. Because
basically the undifferentiatedvoid is pure potential entropy and
zero available energy forwork. That first binary bit, that's
(36:08):
the first anti entropyoccurrence, okay? And then you generate
more and Then you try tostabilize it and then what stabilizes
your pattern or bits isbeneficial in the fundamental process
because by having less entropyyou have more energy available to
do work.
Because it's interesting, Iwould have thought of it the opposite
(36:30):
way. But what you're saying,I'll say also makes sense, which
is I would have thought of theinitial state as low, almost, basically
no entropy all the way.
Yeah, I can understand thattoo, because it's perfect. It's right,
like there's no chaos.
You start introducing. Right,some chaos which creates randomness
(36:51):
and.
Yeah, but it's not introducingchaos, it's introducing variation
in the randomness. So you havetotal field of randomness and now
you have a choice of from 0 to1. Now that you have one point of
non randomness that stands outfrom the totally random field. So
when you have that one point,when it falls down, like you can
use that energy of it fallingdown, but then it's gone.
(37:12):
Right.
So you build up a thousand ofthose. Now you can drop a whole bunch
of points and do some work andcommunicate through your change of
states of these binary bitsand still have some leftover to rebuild
and oppose entropy. Yeah, Imean you get to read the book. No,
he does do a really good jobof walking through it in terms of
(37:32):
mathematics and logic.
What's the purpose of thework? Or what does that mean? What
is the pursuit of work?
It's always to lower entropy.Okay, so this is where it becomes
hand wavy. Very, very much so.As he like defines love as low as
the state of low entropy.
I guess what I'm thinking islike that describes the essence as
being in transformativefunction, which I think we have taught,
(37:55):
talked about to some degree asfar as our learning is the one learning
about itself. And I canunderstand the pursuit and process
of achieving lower entropy andorganizing and that by doing so it
affords resources to do work.But I just don't understand what
that pursuit is. What's theend goal of the process?
(38:17):
Well, it's the nature of thisabsolute ground of being, this au
o as what he callsbootstrapping itself. So a is not
conscious, Right. Itbootstraps itself into these binary
states, waves. Right. And theself organization of those accumulated
(38:37):
changes leads toconsciousness. And, and that consciousness
evolves in one segments of itsextent. It allocates a portion of
its memory to a given ruleset. And that's how consciousness
generates physical reality. Sothere are other segments of its memory
that are allocated to otherrule sets. And so there are other
(38:59):
physical Realities. One of theinteresting things that he says is
that from the perspective ofour physical reality, another physical
reality is not physical. Sothere's a movie in which the main
character seems to live in ahaunted house. And the twist is that
the main characters areactually dead. They're all ghosts.
And their haunting is bypeople who are living. The people
(39:21):
who are living in the maincharacter's house are actually psychic
investigators that are pokingthem with their seance and rituals
to elicit response from them.And so. But each of them perceives
the other as being spirit andthemselves as being real. And so
that's what Campbell's modelreminds me of. He says all the other
dimensions or realities seemnon physical as we describe them
(39:43):
all as non physical. And theywould describe us as non physical
because that's just the wayperception works in consciousness,
in the location. Right. So Iguess broadly the work is just decreasing
entropy. That's it. Which iscircular. I mean, you decrease entropy
so that you have more energyavailable to decrease entropy. But
that's what. That's life,right? That's what life does.
That was my point was where's.What's the end of that?
(40:06):
There isn't an end. I mean,it's just a process. It's like, well,
what's the end of life?
Right?
What's the goal of life? Thegoal of life is to self propagate
and to survive and to fightentropy. That's almost the definition
of life, right? Is things thatactively oppose entropy. Things that
don't actively oppose entropyare things we call inanimate objects.
(40:26):
Some. You were talking aboutyour attachment and knowledge and
use the word models as far asusing them as long as you. They have
utilitarian purpose, but thento be free to release them and use
new models as that situationoccurs. And so I guess I'm trying
(40:48):
to reiterate something that wesaid before, which is that the models
themselves aren't a problem.They are useful for various perspectives.
That the model, when we hadmore physical dangers and things
like that was a different kindof model than we need in current
state, generally speaking. Andso I guess it goes back to multiple
(41:11):
teachings, multiple models,multiple multiplicity in general
as being useful as tools andmaps and guides, but not absolute
in their truth and efficacy.
Yeah. So here is one of hisquotes. The paths to absolute truth,
big truth, and the individualswho walk those paths can be so different
(41:31):
that the description of thesame absolute truth may appear to
be very different,particularly to those of less understanding.
Individual interpretations areas they should be. A reflection of
that big truth within the mindand experience of that individual.
So it's funny because this isemphasizing individual minds and
human experience, which don'texist. That's what I was. I was laughing
(41:53):
at is because he is talkingabout our individual experiences,
understanding that ourindividuality isn't absolutely real.
It's completely real in thecontext of our physical reality,
just not absolutely real. Andso he's emphasizing the nature of
the perception of truth fromour perspective in physical reality.
When we say our learning, arewe talking about a collective learning?
(42:16):
I mean, obviously ourindividual learning supports or helps
the collective learning.
But I mean, I guess I wouldhave to extrapolate and say, yes,
it's not what I was taught. Iwasn't thinking about that. So one
of the things that he says isthat evolution is not a group process,
meaning that you evolve yourconsciousness independent of everybody
(42:37):
else. So he's not talkingabout evolution as a. As a biological
thing, because obviouslyevolution as a biological process
is a group process. But in asense it's not because you have to
have individual variations inorder to have the variability. That's
the grounds for evolution. Andso the answer is yes and no. Right?
(42:58):
Because your question was, isour learning individual or collective?
Both, in a way.
It's both in a way because we.
Need to grow individually, butas we do so it supports. I guess
my question really was, is thegoal of learning, goal of the evolution?
So everything's fractal. Soeverything is. Everything is a system.
(43:21):
Everything's a subsystem ofanother system. Right? So you and
I as individuals are systemsof cells, but we function as individual
units in a larger system ofsociety, which is a subsystem of
a subsystem of subsystem of asubsystem of physical matter reality.
And eventually that systemoptimizes. And by optimizing that
(43:43):
system, if you or I and youand I become enlightened, then we
raise the consciousnessquality. That's what he talks about
a lot, is consciousnessquality of the human system, which
raises the conscious qualityof the physical matter system, which
raises the consciousnessquality of which I think answering
exactly.
What I was trying to get at.
(44:04):
It's all fractal. Makes sense.Yeah. I feel like I got off my chest
when I wanted to.
I think you had legitimateconcerns, and I'm glad that we were
open to having thisconversation. I enjoyed this little
mental exercise bringingscience and spiritual awakening and
enlightenment, the perennialwisdom and philosophy all together.
(44:25):
I find it really fascinatingand enjoyable to continue to uncover
these alignments as as we hadnoted before. As always, we'd love
to hear your perspective onwhat we talked about and hear your
comments. So feel free toshare those in the comments section
and we will engage back.That's all we have for today.
Sounds good. Bye bye now.Thank you for listening to the Tracking
(44:49):
Wisdom podcast. Join us nexttime as we continue the discussion.
Don't forget to follow us onFacebook, Instagram and YouTube.
YouTube and visitwww.eth-studio.com for more information
and.
You're listening to theTracking Wisdom Podcast, exploring
the universal truths that wesee woven through culture, consciousness
and the human experience.
Good morning everybody, andwelcome back to another episode of
the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.My name is Ryan.
My name is Peter.
(00:23):
And today I wanted to sharesomething with you that I found really
interesting. This is whatwe're calling the consciousness stack
and was a result of aconversation I had with ChatGPT and
it yielded an illustration ofa model that kind of aligns with
some of the more computerbased models of what reality could
(00:47):
be. So we just talked aboutTom Campbell who discusses simulation,
and we've discussed DonaldHoffman a number of times who describes
a user interface kind of modeland, and I find those to be quite
interesting and useful in myown conceptualization of how consciousness,
(01:07):
if it is taken as fundamental,how out of that yields this material
experience, the hardenedstate, all those kinds of things.
So this I found to be aninteresting take on creating an illustration
for how that could work. Butbefore we dive into this, Peter and
I, we embrace the mysticalexperience. But mystical experience
(01:32):
doesn't come fromintellection. But what I found in
thinking about this is it maynot drive mystical experience, but
the intellect can be anobstruction or a barrier to mystical
experience. The egoic mind hasthoughts and beliefs, and if it's
too constrained to considerpossibilities of mystical experiences
(01:57):
and a world beyond, then it isa barrier. And so I think there is
value to engaging in theseintellectual exercises to open the
mind. And so what I'm offeringtoday isn't a description of anything
scientific. This isn't beingpresented as teaching or anything
(02:18):
like that. It's meant to be alittle bit of entertainment and tickling
the intellectual mind. I enjoyimagining these kinds of things.
I find it useful in my ownpractice. And maybe you will as well.
I appreciate what you'resaying about having a thought experiment
or an exercise to stretch themind and limber it up and make it
(02:38):
more flexible and lessconstrained and less closed and more
open. And I think in part it'sletting it know that we're going
to go out of the comfort zone.But here are some ideas to maybe
assuage the mind, right? Andthen I think later I'll want to talk
a little bit more maybe about Camel.
(02:58):
So a little context to thelistener. So, as I had said, this
came out of a conversation Iwas having with ChatGPT and ultimately
I posed the question, considera philosophical theoretical contemplation
from a consciousness firstmechanism whereby the conscious awareness
is the underlying essence ofall things. Taking that consciousness
(03:21):
first ontology whereconsciousness is to existence as
the Taoist to the way. Andimagine plausible mechanism for how
consciousness gives rise tothe whole show the space, time, matter,
feelings of solidity and such.And so it describes seven layers.
But the layers conceptuallyare infinite. So there's infinite
(03:44):
strata of filters and layersand information that would stack
conceptually on top of itself,adding depth and complexity to ultimately
give rise to what weexperience. But also what people
might call dimensions ormultiple universe scenarios. But
that there's no limitation asfar as what other kinds of experiences
(04:08):
and systems could be generatedin this model. The first layer, this
essence layer, is the pureawareness could be related to or
described as Dao or Brahman,or any other number of descriptions
or names for that fundamentalessence that underlies all things.
(04:28):
You could call itconsciousness however you want to
describe it. And its nature isinfinite and non local. There's a
timeless element to it. Theanalogy is the infinite ocean with
no waves. So it's purestillness, but holding the potential
for all motion. And what cameto mind is the imagery of God floating
(04:51):
over the waters in pre time orin the beginning, where the field
of awareness was still andinfinite and absolute. And that gives
rise to a second layer calleddifferentiation. And this is where
separation begins. And whatthat is is that the fundamental essence
(05:16):
begins to modulate. So thatgoes to the wave in the ocean kind
of analogy, where the wavesare individuations of the one essence.
What I realized was thatmodulation is that essence of this
versus that and that. It's thebase by which conditional and relational
(05:37):
logic can occur. So in ourbinary code, it's that this and that
kind of relationship thatgives rise to the complexity that
we see in computing. Thewaveform itself is an analog wave,
which actually has infinitepoints of information along its entire
waveform, which would giverise to essential infinite complexity.
(06:01):
Computational complexity, suchas the analog system would be constrained
within the material world withShannon's law and Planck's constant.
Where there is physicalbarriers and frictions that would
constrain the absolute natureof an infinite encoding. But if this
was in this second layer,which is before space and time and
(06:26):
the material rules and systemsthat dictate how things work here,
infinite potential andcapacity for information would have
no restrictions. After thatcomes a rule layer. This is the proto
laws. What I interpret this tobe is Tom Campbell's description
of rule sets, physics and ourunderstanding of the physical world
(06:50):
and nature and rules thatgovern it, lives in this layer, where
once information exists,relations and Patterns between them
naturally emerge. So this iswhat I'm thinking of as far as like
beginning with a high entropy.And then eventually coalescing into
a lower entropy. Intocoherence and boundaries. And that
(07:13):
the laws aren't created orimposed specifically. But that they're
consistent habits ofconsciousness interacting with itself.
So as consciousness has begunto modulate and have this sort of
information layer. Thepatterns begin to emerge through
more randomized interactions.Creating restrictions and rules that
(07:38):
ultimately govern the nextlayer, which would be space time
rendering protocol. Which isdescribed essentially as a coordinate
system. That consciousnessuses to organize experience. So space
and time isn't some sort ofcontainer or absolute. But that it
is an indexing system forindividuated experience. And it could
(08:01):
be rendered similar to like aVR engine. Where the scene in the
local experience. Is renderedas part of the observed. And interacted
with space. Not necessarilyrendered en masse. So once we have
space and time as an indexingsystem. We start exploring matter,
(08:23):
which I'll describe assolidity. So a condensing tangible
and self reinforcinginformational structure. So patterns
become self reinforcing. Andsolidity becomes a perception from
our perceiving faculties.Interaction with these patterns.
(08:43):
That solidity is a resistanceto change. The tactile sensation
is us sensing the pattern'sresistance to change. And different
patterns have varyingresistances to change. So we could
go from very fluid and mobile.To very rigid and solid. So ultimately
(09:05):
there is no actual substance.But that the substance we perceive
is patterns interacting in away that gives an illusion of solidity
to a perceiver. So we havespace and time. We have information,
we have rules, we have matter.Now we start discussing perceiving
faculties. So these are thesensors and mechanisms by which we
(09:29):
have been endowed to interactand interface. With this model. The
senses are part of theinterface. They're not outside the
interface. And they're tunedto detect narrow bands of possible
information patterns. Such assmell, such as hearing, such as taste,
such as infrared, if you're asnake, and so on. As we interact
(09:53):
through the interface withthese sensory inputs. The object
that we observe and theobserver meet in that moment. And
the experience crystallizes.Where there is both a material pattern
object. And the ultimateobserver experiencing that object
(10:15):
in that moment of space andtime. And that's where experience
manifests out of potential.And then the last layer described
was the interaction ofcausality. Where cause and effect
are rendered. Effects of therules and the patterns and the observations
all materializing. So in thebase layer, interactions could be
(10:38):
more Like a shared database.So that information is instant and
non local. So in a way thatkind of describes some of the what
we observe with quantum wherethings change at exceedingly long
distances instantaneously.Because the information database
is non local and can updateinstantly. But in space time, the
(11:00):
rendering imposes a sequentialand causal mechanism so that the
game as it is described stayscoherent to all players. So that
is the story that we live, thelinear sequence of cause and effect
that we perceive, but that atthe base layer, the data information
layer, these things are notbound in locality and they can update
(11:24):
essentially instantly in thatinfinite nonlinear space. How is
it that finite experience iscalled out of that? The imagined
mechanism was a fourdimensional addressing schema where
the coordinates for a givenexperience or time, however you want
(11:44):
to describe it, would startwith a domain id which describes
your specific rule set, thephysics and metaphysics that run
your universe system. So thatcould be considered similar to an
operating system. Then there'dbe a pattern vector, which is the
stable pattern within thatrule set, a state index, which is
(12:06):
the current condition andmoment that that pattern is existing.
And then there's theperspective key, and that's the,
the observer's relationship toall those components. And basically
the query would be able torender a time specific rule set,
specific pattern specificexperience that could be called out
(12:27):
of infinite potential. Theperspective key is the important
component that translates froman objective state into a subjective
experience. So I found thatinteresting. Did you have something
you wanted to respond to?
Well, talking about theperspective key and the perception
parameters made me think aboutsome recent experiences and how they
(12:51):
feed the goal oftranscendence. I think more than
just conceptualizing theboundaries of our physical reality
as we have been doing, talkingabout the ideas of how it could work,
but we also, in order toreally graduate, we have to have
experience in moving beyondthat or, I know, kind of like acquiring
(13:13):
the experience that allows usto be separate from it, to be separate
from it, not just imaginebeing separate from it or talk about
being separate from it. And soone of the things is this shedding
of localized perspective,which is a characteristic of physical
existence. It's veryintrinsic. It's part of the rule
set. It's a key perspectivekey. And this has come up for me
(13:36):
recently. No matter where youare, you're here. Like, you only
experience things from thelocation of your person, right? The
location of your head. And ifyou go over there, you're still here.
You're not in this physicallocation, you're in that location
over there where Your head iswhere your perceptions are. That's
your location. Your locationis always where your perception is.
(13:57):
I've had some recentexperience in dissociating from localized
perception. Not very strongly.I think it's not a very sophisticated
way, because I think what Ithink of as a dissociation or sophisticated
one is out of body experience,right? Which is something that's
still not in my experience.And the other thing which I probably
(14:20):
talked about at some pointbefore, which is much stronger, is
kind of the dissociation fromthe sensory inputs of. And this is
related, I think, toperspective because I think normally
the way we experience theworld through our senses and our
senses kind of define andconfirm our perspective location,
(14:44):
right? And so the experiencethat I've had in deep meditation
is recognizing my senses asseparate from my awareness and a
very clear experience of, oh,this is my visual sense, this is
my vision, this is my visualexperience, this is my auditory experience,
this is my tactile experience.And that they relate and I relate
(15:06):
to them, but they do notdefine me. And I'm not identifying
with. I see the cup and I seemy hand, and there's a sensory experience
associated with my hand or atactile sensory experience associated
with my hand. And also avisual sensory experience for the
cup. And the recognition thatjust because there's a tactile sensory
experience associated with myhand doesn't make that more me. I
(15:28):
guess what I'm trying to do isdescribe how this model can relate
to direct experiences.Obviously, people like Campbell report
extraordinary experiences liketraveling out of body and meeting
other entities, kinds of stufffar beyond. I mean, I can't speak
to that, but I just want toreport, like, oh, yeah, I do have
some direct experiencepointing to how these elements of
(15:52):
experience, these elements ofwhat we call the physical reality,
you know, generally we justcall reality. We don't specify. It's
like, this is what's real.What's real is, you know, the texture
of this thing and the weightof that thing and the color of this
thing. But, you know, really,they're elements of existence in
physical reality in thecontext of. I guess that's probably
(16:13):
the best way of putting it,the context of physical reality.
And that when you have anexperience of separating your awareness
from those things as identity,then it becomes more real and less
conceptualized that we'reoperating in the context of physical
reality. That was somethingthat keyed in when you went over
(16:35):
the address components concept.
So that was the framework.There's yet some more to discuss.
Specifically, our Access todifferent layers. And we've talked
about these supernatural kindsof experiences. So things like psi
phenomena is not asupernatural thing, but is the temporary
(17:00):
bypassing of the guardrails ofthe shared simulation.
So Campbell says the samething, that it's not supernatural.
But I think that's ignoringreally the shared meaning of natural.
So what we generally mean bynatural is following familiar laws.
And so in the sense that it'sbreaking the laws, it's unnatural.
(17:23):
I think that the point thatCampbell makes is just that our conception
of natural, our conception ofwhat the laws are, is slightly inaccurate.
And so these things aren'tbreaking the rules, they're breaking
what we think rules are. And Ithink that that's Campbell's point,
is that there's a continuum ofrules or perceived rules or rules
(17:45):
that we understand. And so inthe sense that you can move from
one to the other, it's allnatural, it's all part of reality.
But then again, in terms ofthe way we have the conversation,
like we're having thisconversation in physical reality.
And so in that sense, thesethings are outside of that reality.
It's a distinction of, Iguess, perception, like this idea
of degrees. And how common isthe experience to say that something
(18:11):
is natural or unnatural?Right. I guess really the accurate
term would be usual and unusual.
Yes.
Nothing at all is unnatural.If it can happen, it's natural. It's
just. It's unusual. You won'toften meet people who have that same
experience.
I think it's an importantpoint, and I think that this is the
reason I talk about it in thisway, is when we try and describe
(18:33):
it as natural or notsupernatural, it's in an effort to
break down the stigmas ofimpossibility. Right. So you were
absolutely correct, I think,in saying, well, it is supernatural
insofar as it's outside thenorm of experience. I think that's
a fair way to define it. Ithink that in part, it's to break
(18:57):
down those barriers of themind that we were talking about early
in the episode, saying thesethings aren't impossible, and they're
not necessarily even strangeor anomalous, so to speak, in its
essence, but in the frequencyof experience, they do come off as
anomaly. Is that fair?
Yeah. It all has to do withframes of reference. So if you have
(19:20):
brought yourself intosecondary frame of reference that
is outside of our physicalexperience, you've significantly
shifted your frame ofreference. That's a commonly shared
frame of reference. So fromthe shift shifted frame of reference,
there's no anomaly but foranyone in the standard frame of reference,
it's anomaly.
(19:40):
Yeah. The second thing Iwanted to bring up is why is it uncommon
and why would it beundesirable? And I think it goes
back to this sharedexperience. And in a way, the. I
guess I'll say purpose. Idon't know if that's the word I really
mean, but we've talked aboutbefore, this nature or desire to
(20:04):
experience is conceivably partof why all this came to be. Right.
Why do we not just live inthat first infinite layer? There's
no experience, there's nomovement and flow. And so if those
things like that debug mode,if it were the norm, would start
(20:25):
to break down at theexperience that we engage with the
experience of the mystical,the experience of that sort of supernatural
is only possible because wehave this norm, Right? If everything's
special, nothing's specialkind of thing.
That's interesting. Thattouches on another insight that I
(20:47):
have this morning. So whatyou're saying is, why is the debug
mode limited and not just wideopen? And the reason is to ensure
stability. And the reason thatyou want stability is that you need
that in order to contrast withthe experience of the mystical. Take.
(21:07):
Okay, so as you know, I'vebeen delving into Campbell more,
and I would say that thatessentially aligns. It's interesting
how your independentexploration parallels his work, of
course, the work of Hoffman,and of course, how he and Hoffman
parallel each other, as we'vementioned. And I think what's encouraging
is that the more independentinvestigations come to the same conclusions,
(21:33):
the more confidence we canhave in the conclusions. And so I
think that that's the pattern.I mean, that's our whole premise
here, right? Is that we'relooking for these underlying rules
or the perennial wisdom or theultimate truth. And it's like, okay,
so the more we find thesethings recurring, then the higher
confidence that we have in thevalidity of this as a potential absolute
(21:57):
truth. So going back to thefirst layer of this undifferentiated
infinity, as you say, it hasprofound roots in all kinds of traditions.
And you cited Old Testament ofmoving on the face of the deep. Right.
Which I love that becausehaven't thought, thought of that.
And it relates so closely tomy shared experience of, I don't
(22:19):
know, deep meditation ormystical contact, you know, and then
the next step being thismodulation. So this is straight from
Campbell very explicitlypostulates these two things in his
own building of the model. Sohe calls this undifferentiated auo,
which is absolute unlimitedoneness. He introduces that as a
(22:40):
term and says this is familiarfrom multiple traditions. And you
could say, oh, that's Shiva.Oh that's God. But in reality it
doesn't have to be asabsolute. It's apparently absolute.
When he describes, or we thinkof the absolute unlimited oneness,
it is that from theperspective of our physical reality.
(23:02):
And that what he demonstratesis that in absolute reality it actually
does not have to be unlimited.It only has to be unlimited from
our perspective in order toallow the generation of our universe.
He basically goes through whatwe would call ground of being, this
essence of what he calls theabsolute unlimited oneness. And he
(23:24):
shows you only have to go abunch of powers of 10 beyond what
we conceive to have thisapparently unlimitedness. But then
his next step is thisdifferentiation, this, this modulation
and the creation of the wave.So, so that's right on. And the,
the rule set is veryinteresting because as a physicist,
(23:46):
he walks it through reallyexplicitly and basically says the
speed of light is just thefundamental basic rule of our physical
reality, right? Which, oh, soI should say he moves it from AUO
to generating these waves andthese differentiated bits and expanding
the bit ness of it and growingthat out until it contains multiplicities.
(24:08):
And so then it becomes amanifold. So it moves from being
a one to being manifold, whichis interesting also because this
has come up repeatedly inconceptions of the divine. Right.
Well, is the divine one or isit manifold? And so now he's gotten
to a U M Absolute unlimitedmanifold or ohm, which is cute. And
(24:29):
so he then he describes howspeed of light is one of the rules
or the essential rule that Omcreated to start to define our physical
reality. And it just occurs tome that is very invocative of Let
there be light, where light isthe essential. I mean, it's very
interesting. And so that's nota connection that he makes, but when
(24:50):
I say it, it's like, oh myGod, how could you avoid that? Right?
And I guess what I'm pointingto is the recurrency of these themes
and then the idea of movinginto matter as being these self reinforcement
forcing patterns that ariseout of the rule set. What that suggested
to me was the reality ofphysical experience being solid.
(25:14):
And I wrote that matter,solidity and reality mean the same
things to us, and yet ouregoic self is that it is this self
reinforcing pattern, right?But we don't call it a physical reality,
but we recognize that it hasthis Persistence. And maybe that's
why people think it is part ofphysical reality, because it seems
(25:38):
physically real. It has thisquality of solidity and persistence
which then becomes the soul.Right? The soul is immortal even
though it's non physical. Andso you have this crossover almost
between physical reality andspiritual reality because of this
persistent pattern. And thenwe start looking for ways to make
(25:59):
it mean something in terms ofphysical reality. Like, well, how
does the soul work? How doesthe soul get reincarnated? And it's
like it doesn't in terms ofphysical reality. It's just the persistence
of pattern. Don't worry abouthow it fits into a body because the
body is just anotherpersistent pattern. These patterns
are associated. There's notone inside another necessarily. You
(26:20):
can construct patterns whereone pattern is spatially inside of
the other pattern, but itdoesn't have to be spatially inside
of it only has to beassociated with in some way. And
then you're talking about thesenses and the shared reality. And
you said separation, that'snot real. Like, even though everything
(26:41):
is not actually separated, itappears separated. And my, my note
was, well, it is separated inthis simulation. So we have to, I
think, be willing tocontinually return to shared reality
and not just, oh, it doesn'tmatter because we're not separate,
because we still have work todo in physical reality, even as pure
(27:02):
consciousness. And so that'sjust the caveat of, yeah, don't go
off the rails because nothingmatters, because it's all not real.
It's real. We're not doneplaying the game because we're not
all wise and benevolent andpure and whatever it is that we need
in order to naturallytranscend the game. There's some
(27:22):
tendency to learn about, aboutthe unreality of separation, the
unreality of physical reality,and then discount it as unvalued
and unfactual. When as far aswe know, there's a huge utility to
it for us as non physicalbeings. We're not just here randomly.
(27:43):
Given this physical rule set.I don't believe anymore that there's
an intentional individualisticdirection saying, you know, I'm going
to place you here in thissituation so that you can learn things
and become better. It's justthe way things are. But we are learning
and we do have kind of a driveto be better. And so this whole discussion
(28:05):
is useful as an exercise. Andwe have to be careful about being
too glib about just sayingeverything's relative. And that doesn't
matter. The reason we have tosay it's not real is because being
unrelentingly attached to theexperience of physical reality constrains
us too much. It prevents usfrom seeing things that we want to
(28:26):
see, and it can cause us todeny the reality of actual experience.
And so that's why we have tosay, oh, it's not real, or we have
to be able to see thatphysical existence isn't absolutely
real. Not because it doesn'tmatter, just with what we started
out the whole episode with thepurpose of expanding perception and
(28:48):
enabling us to learn thingsthat we can't learn if we're overly
constrained.
When you were discussing theinfinite, not having to be absolutely
infinite, it reminded me of anexcerpt in Conversations with God
where in a conversation, Godwas saying, I am all that you imagine
(29:09):
God is, and yet I am to that.To another, it's not constrained
in the way that we think of.Well, because we think of infinity
as a constraint.
Right? Right.
We imagine infinity, which isby definition unconstrained in this
box.
So one thing that I just readabout in book two of Campbell was
(29:31):
that from our layer ofreality, what he calls pmr, from
our physical matter reality,we can conceive of this outer layer,
but there's no way for us tomodel it. We can conceive that there
is something that we can'tconceive, and that's as far as we
can go. And so I'm guessingthat that's what we're scratching
(29:53):
with the mystical experience.So we start to have an idea, and
not just a conceptual idea,but a direct taste of all air beyond
the physical. When Ryan hadintroduced this chat conversation,
I had some concerns about,about how and why we were talking
about it. And I think I'mbeing heavily influenced by Campbell.
(30:16):
It does a good job explainingwhy we're here, which is not to say
that he's stating facts. Infact, the book is my big toe Theory
of everything. It's a theory,it's a model. It's a model that's
very, very well supported by alot of evidence, but that's all it
is. And so one of the thingsthat he says is, you know, it's important
that you not believe all thestuff I'm telling you. In fact, I
(30:36):
don't believe it either. He'sbuilding a working functional model.
And so it's not a question ofbelieving it. Right. It's a question
of matching the elements ofthe model to available evidence.
You advance with a littleconjecture, which is imagination,
but it's logical imagination.And then you reconfirm and you match
it to more evidence, and youadd that to the model because it
(30:56):
matches the evidence. Theother big point he makes is it's
called my big toe because it'smine, it's not yours. This is all
from my experience and myknowledge. And everybody has to have
their own experiences andbuild on this. And so the purpose
of my big toe is so that youcan develop your big toe. You can
develop a model ofinterpreting your experience. So
(31:19):
my concern with talking aboutthis stuff was our goal isn't to
try to tell people the waythings are. It's to try to share
our experiences and how we'reputting these things together in
such a way that we feel likewe're growing and becoming better.
Better in objective andsubjective ways. As we got into this
(31:41):
very conceptual explorationwith ChatGPT, that was my concern.
One of the things thatrelieved me was I had some insights
with my experience of drivingin. So I'm reacting to drivers who
are irritating me andfrightening me. And I was connecting
this to the idea of being inthe physical reality so that we can
have experiences to grow. AndI realized that this is part of my
(32:06):
growth is dropping thesehabitual thought patterns, which
I've talked about an awfullot. And I talk about it as conditioning
in terms of psychologicalconditioning and conditioning in
a larger sense. Thich NhatHanh called them habit energies.
And recently I've startedrecognizing it as a subroutine, just
a pattern that exists which isdeveloped as part of me, but it is
(32:27):
not me. And what I realizedwas a big part of the growth process
is learning to let go ofthings. I mean, this is pretty trite
bumper sticker philosophy,right? But it's a very key truth.
And so I realized that a veryimportant part of our development
is gaining a lot ofattachments. But then later on, it
(32:48):
becomes very important to beable to let go of those attachments.
And before we let go ofattachments, we have to learn discernment,
which is to say that some ofour attachments are constructive
and continue to be useful, andsome of them are not. And so then
we have to be able to let goof those ideas that are no longer
serving us. So one of thethings that Campbell talks about
(33:09):
is he introduces a term offundamental process, which is evolution.
But I think that byintroducing the term fundamental
process, he helps usconceptually dissociate it from biology.
I think growth and developmentare probably the terms that we should
use, but we like to use theterm learning. And then in our culture
Learning tends to be theaccumulation of knowledge. And in
(33:33):
the awakening sphere, there'sthis concern around the mind and
thinking and ideas andknowledge, right? And I think in
this process of development asan individuated portion of infinite
consciousness, what's reallymost important is experience. But
as humans in this context, theway we get there most is we actually
(33:56):
do accumulate a lot ofintellectual knowledge. That's what
gets us to the experiences.For most of us, accumulating more
knowledge helps us access moreexperiences. Not true for everybody,
but I think definitely truefor you and me. And I think that
the problem is when weprioritize intellectual knowledge
(34:18):
over experiential knowledge,and none of these are bad things,
it's just that we're sufferinga very bad imbalance, emphasizing
our thoughts and emphasizingour body, because our body and our
thoughts are the only thingsthat are real because they are us.
Like I am my thoughts and I ammy body and that's all that's real.
That's what we're trying toget away from. But it doesn't mean
that my thoughts and my bodyare bad. My thoughts in my body are
(34:42):
my tools in this reality tomove on. But in our growth process,
all of that helps us haveinsights which often come out of
subconscious and intuition.And those are specific terms that
have technical meanings orhave meanings in certain circles.
But basically they're theseprocesses that process all of our
(35:03):
accumulated knowledge into newknowledge, into new insights. So
it's not about throwing awayknowledge and ideas. It's just realizing
knowledge and ideas aren'tgoing to take you all the way. Don't
be so constrained to thefamiliar that you can't grow beyond
the familiar. And that's wheremost of us tend to exist most of
the time, is we're soconstrained by what's familiar that
(35:23):
we can't grow beyond it. Andthen we're stuck in this repetitive,
harmful, uncomfortable thingsthat we call life and suffering.
So are we equating or do weequate learning as part of evolution?
Is that kind of what we'resaying? Is there part of the same
process.
In the sense that learning isthe ability to retain a choice, right?
(35:44):
To memorize a choice of is itone or zero? Yeah. So Campbell talks
about the fundamental processarising very, very early. And it's
all built around entropy andthe resistance to entropy. Because
basically the undifferentiatedvoid is pure potential entropy and
zero available energy forwork. That first binary bit, that's
(36:08):
the first anti entropyoccurrence, okay? And then you generate
more and Then you try tostabilize it and then what stabilizes
your pattern or bits isbeneficial in the fundamental process
because by having less entropyyou have more energy available to
do work.
Because it's interesting, Iwould have thought of it the opposite
(36:30):
way. But what you're saying,I'll say also makes sense, which
is I would have thought of theinitial state as low, almost, basically
no entropy all the way.
Yeah, I can understand thattoo, because it's perfect. It's right,
like there's no chaos.
You start introducing. Right,some chaos which creates randomness
(36:51):
and.
Yeah, but it's not introducingchaos, it's introducing variation
in the randomness. So you havetotal field of randomness and now
you have a choice of from 0 to1. Now that you have one point of
non randomness that stands outfrom the totally random field. So
when you have that one point,when it falls down, like you can
use that energy of it fallingdown, but then it's gone.
(37:12):
Right.
So you build up a thousand ofthose. Now you can drop a whole bunch
of points and do some work andcommunicate through your change of
states of these binary bitsand still have some leftover to rebuild
and oppose entropy. Yeah, Imean you get to read the book. No,
he does do a really good jobof walking through it in terms of
(37:32):
mathematics and logic.
What's the purpose of thework? Or what does that mean? What
is the pursuit of work?
It's always to lower entropy.Okay, so this is where it becomes
hand wavy. Very, very much so.As he like defines love as low as
the state of low entropy.
I guess what I'm thinking islike that describes the essence as
being in transformativefunction, which I think we have taught,
(37:55):
talked about to some degree asfar as our learning is the one learning
about itself. And I canunderstand the pursuit and process
of achieving lower entropy andorganizing and that by doing so it
affords resources to do work.But I just don't understand what
that pursuit is. What's theend goal of the process?
(38:17):
Well, it's the nature of thisabsolute ground of being, this au
o as what he callsbootstrapping itself. So a is not
conscious, Right. Itbootstraps itself into these binary
states, waves. Right. And theself organization of those accumulated
(38:37):
changes leads toconsciousness. And, and that consciousness
evolves in one segments of itsextent. It allocates a portion of
its memory to a given ruleset. And that's how consciousness
generates physical reality. Sothere are other segments of its memory
that are allocated to otherrule sets. And so there are other
(38:59):
physical Realities. One of theinteresting things that he says is
that from the perspective ofour physical reality, another physical
reality is not physical. Sothere's a movie in which the main
character seems to live in ahaunted house. And the twist is that
the main characters areactually dead. They're all ghosts.
And their haunting is bypeople who are living. The people
(39:21):
who are living in the maincharacter's house are actually psychic
investigators that are pokingthem with their seance and rituals
to elicit response from them.And so. But each of them perceives
the other as being spirit andthemselves as being real. And so
that's what Campbell's modelreminds me of. He says all the other
dimensions or realities seemnon physical as we describe them
(39:43):
all as non physical. And theywould describe us as non physical
because that's just the wayperception works in consciousness,
in the location. Right. So Iguess broadly the work is just decreasing
entropy. That's it. Which iscircular. I mean, you decrease entropy
so that you have more energyavailable to decrease entropy. But
that's what. That's life,right? That's what life does.
That was my point was where's.What's the end of that?
(40:06):
There isn't an end. I mean,it's just a process. It's like, well,
what's the end of life?
Right?
What's the goal of life? Thegoal of life is to self propagate
and to survive and to fightentropy. That's almost the definition
of life, right? Is things thatactively oppose entropy. Things that
don't actively oppose entropyare things we call inanimate objects.
(40:26):
Some. You were talking aboutyour attachment and knowledge and
use the word models as far asusing them as long as you. They have
utilitarian purpose, but thento be free to release them and use
new models as that situationoccurs. And so I guess I'm trying
(40:48):
to reiterate something that wesaid before, which is that the models
themselves aren't a problem.They are useful for various perspectives.
That the model, when we hadmore physical dangers and things
like that was a different kindof model than we need in current
state, generally speaking. Andso I guess it goes back to multiple
(41:11):
teachings, multiple models,multiple multiplicity in general
as being useful as tools andmaps and guides, but not absolute
in their truth and efficacy.
Yeah. So here is one of hisquotes. The paths to absolute truth,
big truth, and the individualswho walk those paths can be so different
(41:31):
that the description of thesame absolute truth may appear to
be very different,particularly to those of less understanding.
Individual interpretations areas they should be. A reflection of
that big truth within the mindand experience of that individual.
So it's funny because this isemphasizing individual minds and
human experience, which don'texist. That's what I was. I was laughing
(41:53):
at is because he is talkingabout our individual experiences,
understanding that ourindividuality isn't absolutely real.
It's completely real in thecontext of our physical reality,
just not absolutely real. Andso he's emphasizing the nature of
the perception of truth fromour perspective in physical reality.
When we say our learning, arewe talking about a collective learning?
(42:16):
I mean, obviously ourindividual learning supports or helps
the collective learning.
But I mean, I guess I wouldhave to extrapolate and say, yes,
it's not what I was taught. Iwasn't thinking about that. So one
of the things that he says isthat evolution is not a group process,
meaning that you evolve yourconsciousness independent of everybody
(42:37):
else. So he's not talkingabout evolution as a. As a biological
thing, because obviouslyevolution as a biological process
is a group process. But in asense it's not because you have to
have individual variations inorder to have the variability. That's
the grounds for evolution. Andso the answer is yes and no. Right?
(42:58):
Because your question was, isour learning individual or collective?
Both, in a way.
It's both in a way because we.
Need to grow individually, butas we do so it supports. I guess
my question really was, is thegoal of learning, goal of the evolution?
So everything's fractal. Soeverything is. Everything is a system.
(43:21):
Everything's a subsystem ofanother system. Right? So you and
I as individuals are systemsof cells, but we function as individual
units in a larger system ofsociety, which is a subsystem of
a subsystem of subsystem of asubsystem of physical matter reality.
And eventually that systemoptimizes. And by optimizing that
(43:43):
system, if you or I and youand I become enlightened, then we
raise the consciousnessquality. That's what he talks about
a lot, is consciousnessquality of the human system, which
raises the conscious qualityof the physical matter system, which
raises the consciousnessquality of which I think answering
exactly.
What I was trying to get at.
(44:04):
It's all fractal. Makes sense.Yeah. I feel like I got off my chest
when I wanted to.
I think you had legitimateconcerns, and I'm glad that we were
open to having thisconversation. I enjoyed this little
mental exercise bringingscience and spiritual awakening and
enlightenment, the perennialwisdom and philosophy all together.
(44:25):
I find it really fascinatingand enjoyable to continue to uncover
these alignments as as we hadnoted before. As always, we'd love
to hear your perspective onwhat we talked about and hear your
comments. So feel free toshare those in the comments section
and we will engage back.That's all we have for today.
Sounds good. Bye bye now.Thank you for listening to the Tracking
(44:49):
Wisdom podcast. Join us nexttime as we continue the discussion.
Don't forget to follow us onFacebook, Instagram and YouTube.
YouTube and visitwww.eth-studio.com for more information
and.
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