THE UNIVERSE
So, all the cosmologists are searching for dark matter and energy. Thus far, there are several theories provided to justify belief in their existence by some of them, but no physical evidence. Some do not believe either exist at all, and put forward alternative theories. All these efforts are attempts to solve the mysterious question of why the visible matter of the cosmos falls far short of what the scientists reckon should be out there. What we can see cannot account for how the Universe stays in existence or behaves in the way it does, so it is presumed there must be something else holding everything together: leaving aside, naturally, the supernatural intervention of a deity for the sake of objectivity and the continuation of rational thought.
Knowledge is a strange phenomenon. It can be the greatest high on earth when a discovery appears to fill in another space in the puzzle of existence. It can also be trap, which ensnares the mind and refuses to let its prey escape no matter how hard it struggles to get free. Today, modern cosmologists are mentally tied to, mainly, Newton 's and Einstein's theories of how everything works in the cosmos. Most, however, know well enough that these scientist's theories do not supply all the answers, and there are some who dare to think they may be completely wrong.
In the realms of the macro and the micro, a new physics is required to comprehend the quantum world at the micro-end of the world and the overall phenomenon of the cosmos itself at the macro-end of the world. We are no nearer now to finding what that new physics is today than we were when we first discovered we needed it, if we were to have an inkling of how these two realms functioned: but, it is a heck of a buzz searching for it, and going after the grand prizes, which apparently relevant discoveries earn for the lucky physicist or cosmologist.
In the same way as the ancient minds tied themselves to scientific theories until somebody came along and showed the world they could not be right, so modern minds may well be tied to our current areas of knowledge. Stepping outside the known realms however is phenomenally difficult literally. Our current knowledge of the universe has been implanted in the minds of modern thinkers, so asking a mind to forget all that it has learned, to distance itself from the known world, and consider something utterly other is demanding a vast amount.
So, how can that be achieved? Maybe by playing, playing around with ideas not normally thought to be relevant in any way. By taking an idea and running with it as if ignorant of all accepted knowledge of the known universe.
I want to play now with an idea. It may be phenomenally stupid, or impossible, or theoretically possible but utterly impossible to prove, or already thought about by another mind and this is merely an example of entanglement at the quantum level. Whatever category it falls into, it is fun trying to embrace a new concept of everything. So here goes.
I want to imagine that the quantum world is similar to a motherboard in a computer. It is a clumsy comparison because my motherboard is not composed of atoms but quanta; that is packets of energy functioning on a micro-level, and infinitely more complex than our current understanding of that micro-world. It is, however, comprehensible to my mind so I will run with it for the time being.
Unlike a computer in our world, my motherboard does not require a motor to activate it. It generates its own energy, which is endless simply because the quantum world is infinite. It had no beginning and it will have no end. It is, and everything that is exists in it, and through it.
Playing now, I imagine the material cosmos made up of inanimate matter as the hardware of the Universe. Once this is up and running, the software can be introduced. I see the software as animated matter or life in all its myriad forms, known and unknown scattered throughout the cosmos.
So far so good, I have my motherboard, my hardware, my power, and my software and they are all working together to hold everything in being – well, the material world in being; the quantum world does not need to be held in being because it is the source of all being.
In the quantum world, a billion, billion worlds can exist of which ours is only one of them. The only limitation exists in the material worlds because all are essentially finite. What came out of the quantum world must eventually return to it to become something other in the great game of creation.
Here in my imagined world, there is no question of missing matter because I am seeing the cosmos as the hard drive now. When software is fed into a computer, the files spread out across the disc and large spaces are present where nothing is happening and nothing exists in these spaces, but the computer still functions perfectly well. The software once activated does what it is programmed to do.
Now we know that every cell in every living thing has its own code, it is only a small leap to realise that the whole of creation is, in reality, a vastly complex program. This is not to reduce it to a mechanical universe. This would only happen if our minds perceived the quantum universe as mechanical, and that is something I am refraining from doing at this moment in time. It is far, far more than that, but quite beyond my capacity to express it verbally because I do not have the terminology to describe it yet. At this moment in time, I am sensing it instinctively and allowing it free play.
I can imagine that, in the beginning, it would only take a small program to initiate the dawn of life, but it would be a self-perpetuating program and capable of learning as it expanded its knowledge of the cosmos in which it now existed. By trial and error, it could evolve and reproduce life forms wherever fertile environments could be found. There would be crashes on occasions, just like there are in one of our computers, and, like them, it would have to start again and begin to repair the damage, or start afresh if beyond repair, but once set in motion, it was unstoppable in its capacity to keep producing life forms adaptive to every change in the environment.
We are the latest of its life forms, and perhaps one of the few capable of reaching out and trying to comprehend what and who we are. I like to play with that concept. Is it possible that the quantum world has produced consciousness in order to communicate with its creations, or is it an accident that produced a creature who wanted to know where it came from?
I see a problem unfortunately. Well, to be honest, several, but this is one that I am currently struggling with because alarming. In my observations of human life, I am coming to the conclusion that we have reached a plateau of comprehension and creativity. Now, we appear to be going round in circles or, alternatively, constantly recycling everything because we are stuck in a groove. To return to our computer comparison, the software appears to have a fault on the hard drive, which is causing the software to have a glitch; namely, it is now repeating its program over and over again and making no progress. Either a kick-start is required in order for it to move on, or it has actually run its course and there is no further prospect of evolution in its current form.
Perhaps I tell myself, the program has been extraordinarily successful. Unfortunately, for the hard drive, too successful in that it appears to have thrown up a creature similar to a virus called human beings. We have multiplied vociferously across the environment and are continuing to do so with no current predators capable of stopping us, except that is, ourselves. The original program does not save what is damaging to it in the end. It will terminate a particular life form if too destructive to all the other life forms around, or one, which has reached the peak of its potential. In my playfulness, I ran into this minefield of a thought not intentionally, but here I am, and it is rather scary to say the least. Just as the dinosaurs were wiped off the hard drive, so might we be if the program sees no point in continuing our existence.
I do not know how to get around this thought. For the moment, I will set it aside because there is something else I need to consider. How, I ask myself, did the quantum world bring into being the atomic world?
If it is energy, perhaps that energy must have somewhere to go otherwise, it remains just energy. Now, I have another dilemma. Why, I ask myself, should it have to go anywhere? Why could it not be simply energy and stay in its current form forever? Does the quantum world possess a consciousness of its own? Could this energy be consciousness? Consciousness must have a ground in which to function, in other words, nothing will always be nothing and produce nothing, so consciousness must be something, and something has to have existence, which implies a material base from which to function.
So what conclusion can I reach from those thoughts? Perhaps, the quantum world is consciousness and consciousness can manifest itself at will. The atomic world, in which the cosmos and all it contains, exists because the consciousness that is the quantum world wills it. It may even be capable of ceasing to will it, and everything will be reabsorbed back into it again to become simply conscious energy without form.
The possibility exists that consciousness is the by-product of energy. Where energy exists, consciousness exists. No energy, no consciousness, hence when our human energy finally runs out, our consciousness dies along with it. Is the consciousness of the quantum world the same as the consciousness found in living creatures, including human beings? I do not see that it is. It is primal consciousness devoid of emotion or morality. These two qualities emerged when brains came into being capable of experiencing them at a personal level.
The question here is whether the quantum world's consciousness experiences these two qualities and incorporates them into its own consciousness, or remains utterly other always because infinite while the personal consciousness is finite. If it is the former, perhaps there is a form of communication between the infinite and the finite; currently beyond our capacity to perceive in any great depth, but is beginning to be explored in our time. If it is the latter, no such communication could or ever would exist. All that exists now is simply a passing manifestation of the action of the quantum world's consciousness, and will come and go as and when the quantum world creates these phenomena.
I used the word ‘will' earlier to describe the quantum world's creation of atomic worlds, but even that usage may not apply in the quantum world as it does within its conscious creations. ‘Will' implies voluntary acts performed by a being, but perhaps the ‘urge' to create would be more appropriate when applied to the consciousness of the quantum world. It is therefore an involuntary drive to manifest itself in a finite world.
The implications, if it is able to communicate with its creations opens up a whole new ball game far too complicated to play around with here, but would be fun trying to resolve one way or the other another time. It does pose the question though as to who is the teacher and who is the pupil when it comes to emotions and morality. Perhaps, conscious creations are the beings that provide a whole new dimension of consciousness for the quantum world to embrace simply because unavoidably linked.
This is a game I am playing by stepping outside the known physics of our world, because I think that is what we are meant to do now. We have reached a point in our existence when demands are being made on us to abandon childish things and to move into the next stage of evolutionary growth. We are becoming, in the world of the affluent, sated with material things of every size, shape, colour and description, with entertainment for bored minds, and with mind numbing creations designed to stop us thinking too much, or narcotics to stimulate stale minds. With no predators powerful enough to reduce us greatly in numbers, only we can eliminate ourselves from creation either quickly or painfully slowly. I think we are in the process now of trying to do this because we have lost sight of a future worth pursuing and I cannot do anything to stop it.
I have here a beginning and an end, but not one I chose to reach. My mind took a route in my play and here is where I find myself now. The question is – do we survive by evolving into the next stage of our evolution, or die out because we were incapable of changing?
I think I found out that what the cosmologists are searching for is the matter of the quantum world in which everything floats, for want of a better expression, a living consciousness constantly creating life and the environments capable of sustaining it. Gravity, which holds everything in being, enters the cosmos from the quantum world, and is strong or weak by necessity. Our sensation of expanding outward may be due to the growth of our own minds. The energy required to keep a consciousness existing may be the driving force behind the expansion of our universe. A side effect of this thought could be that, if we have reached the peak of our evolution and it is time for us to be reabsorbed back into the quantum world, the cosmos itself may go into reverse and reduce in size as we die out. In other words, the cosmos and human consciousness are linked in ways up until now beyond our wildest imaginings.
And I have reached the end of my play. I ran with my thoughts and here they are for what they are worth. Fantasy or fiction, rubbish or profound, I have no idea, but I can think them so they must have a base in reality somewhere otherwise I could not have thought them in the first place. Now that is such a thrilling concept and one that opens up a whole new plethora of thoughts…..
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