Universe, qualia, enlightenment

[Breakingthewall]

 

Let’s consider the following conceptual framework to understand what “enlightenment” actually is. Bit long, as short as it can be. 

First, we have a coherent universe, a system of relations governed by universal laws that organize energy, matter and cosmic events, allowing increasingly complex relational systems to arise. Vibrations of fields that we call energy, atoms, stars, planets, complex molecules… until we reach a fundamental phase transition we call life.

Life is the appearance of self-legislated systems, that is, systems with their own internal laws and a built-in drive for self-preservation. This is a mode of existence absolutely different from everything that came before it.

Fields, energy, stars, planets, these are what they are because of the universal laws that govern them. These laws make them inevitable. But life does not operate within that same frame: it is not the mere result of gravity + the strong nuclear force + electromagnetism, etc. Rather, within that framework of physical laws, life is the emergence of a universe with its own interior laws. It does not break the fundamental laws of physics; it operates according to them but creates, on top of them, a new set of exclusive internal laws. In effect, life is a universe inside a larger universe. And if the “main universe” is probably itself a subsystem inside something larger, nothing suggests this is impossible.

This new universe, with its own internal laws, produces an essential duality between inside and outside. A living organism must preserve itself in order to be, and this necessity forces selective interaction with the environment. A living organism is not a collection of atoms, but a pattern that places those atoms in exact positions and functions, a vast map of processes occurring at different levels continuously. Can you see the map? Because here comes the interesting part.

The interaction between the interior and the exterior inevitably produces what we call qualia, subjective experience. Qualia is the interface between these two universes: the living system and the external universe. In simple organisms it is very basic, impulses that distinguish heat from cold, high from low mineral concentrations, light from dark, desirable from undesirable. As the organism increases in complexity, this interface does the same: it expands, becomes richer, more nuanced. The qualia of a bacterium is not the qualia of a plant, or a worm, or a fish. With each phase transition, the organism’s range of movement and possible actions increases exponentially, and the interface connecting the two universes expands proportionally.

This interface is essentially a third universe, supported by the biological base and shaped by the external world. It is not more or less real than the main universe or the secondary universe we call life, there are no categories, only expressions of reality. Qualia, subjective experience, is the reality, just as the universe is reality and the organism is reality. Qualia is a stable cloud of processes and relations, with a defined form.

When living organisms reach large degrees of complexity, as in the case of a rat, qualia, the subjective cloud, begins to take the shape of an individual that desires, fears, enjoys and suffers. This stable cloud of quantum-level processes begins to recognize itself vaguely as a proto-self that must defend itself from destruction and preserve its lineage.

Complexity continues to advance, and new beings appear in which a further phase transition takes place: a new dimension of being emerges: symbolic mind. A mind that transcends rigid conditioning tied to matter and begins to operate beyond it.

This symbolic mind is a cloud of qualia/processes capable of operating through symbols/forms created within this cloud that emulate both the biological reality that sustains it and the external reality in which it must operate and adapt. Symbolism gives rise to what we call memory: a mega-symbol composed of countless smaller symbols, stable enough to create the image of change unfolding in a temporal line. It is supported by atavistic impulses implanted by evolution: the absolute need to survive, belong to the group, reproduce, influence, avoid harm, and pursue pleasure.

This system, this quantum cloud of enormous complexity and perfect synchrony, is what we call consciousness.

This is the highest peak of complexity we can observe. And now comes the next phase: the deconstruction of complexity.

This hyper-complex system, consciousness, is a universe in itself, and as such, an expression of reality. That is, it is reality. This being that knows itself, that defines itself, can deconstruct itself and return to its essential nature. This is simple, because what it truly is is its essential nature.

A bit of meditation: first, we remove the process called memory, which creates a temporal line, and we situate ourselves in the absolute now. Simple: deactivate symbolism, which is to say, deactivate meaning. Without meaning there is no time. It is that direct. But of course ,there are energetic forces behind the meaning, fear, desire. Simple, but not so easy to face them. 

Second, we remove sensory input. Obviously it cannot be eliminated, but it is relatively easy to withdraw relevance from it. Without becoming and without sensation, what remains is something naked, alone, singular, an odd structure, a kind of energetic barrier, a black hole that absorbs everything: the self.

What is the self? Is it something? A witness? A witness of what? Of experience? But what is the self without experience? Here is the key: the self is the final door that keeps the system called consciousness closed. This is very difficult to explain or think about, because the one who explains and thinks is the self, or better, the self is the apparent center of all those process. 

At a certain moment, when the energetic flow of the entire system aligns in a certain way, the closure dissolves, the self collapses as a center, and then it ceases to close. The ultimate nature of reality reveals itself. What reality is before that enormous tangle of molecules, life, rats and selves: absolute openness, total being.

Total being is not conscious or unconscious, it is total. “Conscious” only means a process that registers what is happening. Without any register, there is no change, there is no sense of self, there is not what we call "consciousness", there is being. Being is equally total with or without that process. But in that process the self recognizes that what it truly is… is total being. Because everything that exists is that, and all the dance of form is simply the dance of form, the inevitable expression of what has no limits. Total being is not movement, but what makes movement inevitable. It is not conscious or unconscious, not moving or still; none of these categories touch the openness. It is totality, and totality perceives itself through the very system created within itself called consciousness, and recognizes itself in its essence, in its openness, in its unlimited nature. 

One thing is very important: any identification must fall. That's more difficult that it seems. Consciousness is an identification. Love, god, infinite, everything, glory. Identifications. All belong to the self, to the center. The absolute is absolutely naked. It's not nothing nor something, it's open. 

 

 

[Ishanga]

@Breakingthewall Nice!!!

Now for the Ya Butts below:)

[LastThursday]

@Breakingthewall I enjoyed that. As I like to say: life is matter with an identity. Life is also an epiphenomenon, it is made of dead matter that is constantly flowing and self-organising, the patterns it makes is life itself.

Life resists entropy and change to maintain itself. But fundamentally all matter has mass which also resists change of motion: inertial mass is in one sense "alive". Matter has the identity of "mass".

[Breakingthewall]

@Ishanga @LastThursday thanks for reading. 

10 hours ago, LastThursday said:

Life resists entropy and change to maintain itself. But fundamentally all matter has mass which also resists change of motion: inertial mass is in one sense "alive". Matter has the identity of "mass".

Matter is a form of vibration of reality that spontaneously organizes itself into increasingly complex patterns, eventually reaching extremely complex forms like amino acids or self-replicating RNA molecules. No one knows how the leap from these molecules to self-organizing systems with their own laws, called life, occurs, but the point is that life is no more "alive" than a hydrogen atom; it is simply more complex, at a different stage of complexity. Just as a bacterium and a cat are at different stages of complexity. I suppose this tendency toward extreme levels of complexity can be explained by entropy, which forces a closed system to inevitably tend toward disorder, but always with pockets of extreme order that ultimately lead to greater entropy. 

It seems that at certain critical points, reality shifts phase, inevitably finding the most optimal path. Unfortunately, science has its limits for now and cannot see beyond them, but by logical deduction, reality functions through symmetry breaks and an intrinsic tendency to re-establish that symmetry, not going back, but seeking possible stable coherences. It seems to be an intrinsic property of reality.

 

[LastThursday]

@Breakingthewall obviously we're not going to solve "life" in a few paragraphs on a forum. My intuition tells me that there is a continuum between dead and alive matter. Viruses for example are on the cusp and maybe there's matter more dead or more alive than a virus. All life seems to have the ability to overcome disruption and keep itself intact. 

In digital communications it's possible to have forward error correction on a message, so that if it is corrupted in transit, then the original message can be recovered. For life to be self-sustaining against being corrupted, all it would need is an error correcting mechanism. If the error correction was strong enough it could sustain itself indefinitely. In a sense an organism "knows itself" so that it can "correct itself", it has an identity. Non-living matter in general doesn't have this self-correcting ability.