NON-DUALITY
The universe arises from life and consciousness, not the other way around.
Life is not some accident of physics.
When you add consciousness you can explain some of the biggest puzzles.
For instance it becomes clear why space and time, and properties of matter depend on the observer.
And the parameters of the universe are fine tuned for life.
Subject - Object Duality (Seeking is looking for objects out there when there is no out there)
We are taught since childhood that the Universe is divided into two entities.
Ourselves and that which is outside of us.
Self is simply defined on that which we can control. I can move my fingers, but I cannot wiggle your toes. The dichotomy is based largely on control and manipulation. But basic biology tells us we do not control the trillions of cells in our body anymore than we control a rock or a tree.
Consider everything around you right now, the room you are in, the furniture, the people, etc.
Language and custom all say that that is outside us in the external world. But you cannot see anything through the bone surrounding your brain. Everything you experience right now your body, the walls, the ceiling are an active process that is occurring in your mind. You are this process, not just the part you control. Eyes are not just portals to the world. What you see happening is a construction happening moment to moment in your mind. And even the light in the room your are in is moving through a space you create in your mind.
The weather outside... blue sky, could be changed. Bright, hot and humid, all relative. Use glasses to turn world upside down and brain/consciousness corrects. This logic applies to everything. Reality involves your consciousness. It could not be there without your consciousness.
"We have learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenses have a creative power; perhaps there are no objects."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
So why is everyone surprised at the experimental findings of quantum theory?
It is because we are still operating in a severely outdated paradigm.
We still believe there is an external world that exists independent of the perceiving subject.
The meaning and interpretation of quantum mechanics has been debated for over 100 years UP TO TODAY!
Einstein was one of the first to stubbornly defend that there is a real world "out there". I'd like to think the moon is there when I am not observing it...etc. But Bohr shut everyone of his argument down.
When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not measuring the world, we are creating it.
-- Neils Bohr.
Consider the famous two slit experiment. What scientists watch a particle go through two holes in a barrier, it acts like a little bottle and logically goes through one hole or the other. But if you don't watch it, it behaves like a wave and can go through both holes at the same time.
So why should a particle 'out there' change its behavior whether you watch it or not? And of course the answer is, reality is a process that involves your consciousness.
Consider Heisenbergs famous uncertainty principle. If there was really a world 'out there' with just particles bouncing around than we should certainly be able to measure all of their properties. But you can't. So for instance a particle's exact location and it's momentum cannot be known at the same time. So why should it matter to matter or particles what you should decide to measure? The answer is simple, the particles are not just 'out there'.
Entanglement is another example: how can particles be connected at opposite sides of the galaxy out there in violation of the speed of light. Again they are not just out there, space and time are tools of our mind. Tools of animal understanding. We wake up in the morning and the world is just magically there.
But quantum physics shows again and again, that not a single particle exists 'out there' with real properties until it's observed. Reality is a process that involves consciousness.
Space and time are not these hot cold objects out there, sort of like pebbles and shells you pick up on the seashore. Wave your hand through the air right now. If you take everything away, what is left? Nothing. And the same thing is for time, you cannot put it in a bottle.
All of experience is just information occurring inside your mind and space and time are the minds tools for putting it all together. We even do it in dreams with your eyes closed. You can be on the beach, with a lover enjoying the sun, just like it is real. Your mind has the ability to create space and time in dreams.
***Universe fined tuned for Us - Goldilocks principle***
Third bear finds it is just right.
Similarly the Cosmos has a long list (over 200 parameters) that are not too this, not too that for life to exist. [Many examples].. So exact just right for life to exist. Tweak any and you do not exist. They are not predicted by any theories. Why are they are exactly one way?
1) God did it
2) Anthropic Principle - We must find these conditions because if we are alive what else can we find. 10^500 universes, and we live in the one lucky one. The universe with all its parameters simply reflect the spatial temporal logic of the mind / conscious observer
Theories of everything, totality and completeness... These comprehensive theories, All of them, fail to take into account one critical factor and that is we are creating them. That we are the biological creature imbued with consciousness that fashions the stories that makes the observations and it gives names to things. Science has not confronted what is most familiar and most mysterious and that is consciousness.
For several centuries, a single mindset has dominated scientific thought. This model has had countless insights and applications that have transformed all of our lives. But it has now reached the end of its useful life. This old model proposes that the universe was until recently just a lifeless collection of particles just bouncing off each other and that they were following this predetermined rules that were mysterious in their origin. And the universe was presented like this watch that was wound up and that now is unwinding and allowing for a little quantum uncertainty and will unwind in a semi-predictable way. Of course there are lots of problems with this paradigm, some that are obvious, and some more subtle, but the overarching problems involves the origin of life and consciousness which is still an unknown process, and consciousness especially is poorly unstop.
Consciousness is not just a problem for biology its a problem for physics. There is nothing in physics that can explain how a group of molecules in the brain creates consciousness, especially how we subjectively feel that. Science cannot explain how consciousness arises from matter.
But consciousness aside, there are still a lot of problems with the standard model of physics like how the universe and all the laws of Nature just suddenly popped out of nothing one day for no apparent reason. And we call this titanic event the Big Bang and we don't even begin to understand the Big Bang even though we keep tinkering with all the parameters.
Science is good at figuring out how the parts works, but what eludes us is the big picture. We create this exquisite technologies from our ever growing knowledge of fundamental processes, but we do bad in one area which unfortunately encompasses all bottom line issues.
What is the nature of this thing we call reality; this universe as whole. Some scientists insist a theory of everything is just around the corner and eventually we'll know everything. And this hasn't happened for the reason that we have shunted a very critical component out of our view, and that is consciousness.
In short the attempt to explain the universe, its origins, its parameters and what's really going requires us to understand how the Observer, us, how our presence plays a role. Ultimately it is the biological creature and consciousness that makes the observations that creates the theories and our entire education system , and the construction of language itself revolves around that bottom line mindset that assumes there is a separate universe out there, which each of us individually arrives on a very temporary basics. It's further assumed that we accurately perceive this external pre-existing reality and we play little or no role in its appearance.
However starting in the 1920s, the results of experiments started to show just the opposite so the observer it turns out, critically influences the outcome. An electron can be both a particle and a wave but where the particle is located and where it is heading, depends on the actual act of observation itself and again this very famously demonstrated in the double slit experiment whereby your watch a particle or light pass through two slits. Particle if you look, wave if you don't that can go through both slits. And since the 1920s the list of paradoxes and intractable problems has continued to grow starting with those accompanying the Big Bang, for how could the universe arise out of nothingness.
Experiments during the past couple decades have shown that particles can influence each other instantaneously as if endowed with a kind of ESP. Puzzled scientists for decades.
But if you accept a life created reality at its face value, it becomes understandable. Take the seemingly undeniable logic that your kitchen is always present. You think its contents assume its familiar shapes and colors whether or not you are in it. But consider the colors and shapes of your kitchen are seen because the particles of light from the overhead bulb bounce off the various objects and interact with your brain through a complex set of retinal and neural intermediates. But on its own, light doesn't have any color, or brightness or any visual characteristics at all, it's merely an electromagnetic wave.
You think the kitchen is there in your absence, but the reality is that nothing remotely resembling what you perceive as your kitchen could possibly be there without your consciousness interacting with it.
Quantum physics comes at it from a much hotter angle and arrives at the same conclusion. But really it turns out your oven, fridge, etc are composed of a shivering swarm of energy and the results of quantum physics such as the double slit experiment, tell us, that not a single one of those particles or any of those objects exists in a definite space until you observe them. Rather they exists in a range of probabilities or waves of probability as Max Born once. Outside of that fact there is nothing there just statistical probabilities of particles existing in certain locations. So if they are not being observed, that cannot be thought of as having any real existence, either duration or position in space. It is only in the presence of the observer, that is when you go to the kitchen for a drink of water that the mind actually sets the scaffolding of these particles in place. It is not until the mind lays down the threads somewhere in that haze of probabilities that is described by the uncertainty principle can they be thought of as being either here or there or having actual position or physical reality.
Most people accept separate reality outside us more or less what we see.
So in this view the eyes are only clear windows that let in the world. The tree is still there and the moon still shines whether or not you are looking at them. Even animals perceive more or less the same reality which exists even if no eyes are seeing it.
This issue of "is it really out there?"
Once you fully understand that there is no external 'out there'outside of biological existence and consciouness, the rest more or less falls into place.
Life is not some accident of physics.
When you add consciousness you can explain some of the biggest puzzles.
For instance it becomes clear why space and time, and properties of matter depend on the observer.
And the parameters of the universe are fine tuned for life.
Subject - Object Duality (Seeking is looking for objects out there when there is no out there)
We are taught since childhood that the Universe is divided into two entities.
Ourselves and that which is outside of us.
Self is simply defined on that which we can control. I can move my fingers, but I cannot wiggle your toes. The dichotomy is based largely on control and manipulation. But basic biology tells us we do not control the trillions of cells in our body anymore than we control a rock or a tree.
Consider everything around you right now, the room you are in, the furniture, the people, etc.
Language and custom all say that that is outside us in the external world. But you cannot see anything through the bone surrounding your brain. Everything you experience right now your body, the walls, the ceiling are an active process that is occurring in your mind. You are this process, not just the part you control. Eyes are not just portals to the world. What you see happening is a construction happening moment to moment in your mind. And even the light in the room your are in is moving through a space you create in your mind.
The weather outside... blue sky, could be changed. Bright, hot and humid, all relative. Use glasses to turn world upside down and brain/consciousness corrects. This logic applies to everything. Reality involves your consciousness. It could not be there without your consciousness.
"We have learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenses have a creative power; perhaps there are no objects."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
So why is everyone surprised at the experimental findings of quantum theory?
It is because we are still operating in a severely outdated paradigm.
We still believe there is an external world that exists independent of the perceiving subject.
The meaning and interpretation of quantum mechanics has been debated for over 100 years UP TO TODAY!
Einstein was one of the first to stubbornly defend that there is a real world "out there". I'd like to think the moon is there when I am not observing it...etc. But Bohr shut everyone of his argument down.
When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not measuring the world, we are creating it.
-- Neils Bohr.
Consider the famous two slit experiment. What scientists watch a particle go through two holes in a barrier, it acts like a little bottle and logically goes through one hole or the other. But if you don't watch it, it behaves like a wave and can go through both holes at the same time.
So why should a particle 'out there' change its behavior whether you watch it or not? And of course the answer is, reality is a process that involves your consciousness.
Consider Heisenbergs famous uncertainty principle. If there was really a world 'out there' with just particles bouncing around than we should certainly be able to measure all of their properties. But you can't. So for instance a particle's exact location and it's momentum cannot be known at the same time. So why should it matter to matter or particles what you should decide to measure? The answer is simple, the particles are not just 'out there'.
Entanglement is another example: how can particles be connected at opposite sides of the galaxy out there in violation of the speed of light. Again they are not just out there, space and time are tools of our mind. Tools of animal understanding. We wake up in the morning and the world is just magically there.
But quantum physics shows again and again, that not a single particle exists 'out there' with real properties until it's observed. Reality is a process that involves consciousness.
Space and time are not these hot cold objects out there, sort of like pebbles and shells you pick up on the seashore. Wave your hand through the air right now. If you take everything away, what is left? Nothing. And the same thing is for time, you cannot put it in a bottle.
All of experience is just information occurring inside your mind and space and time are the minds tools for putting it all together. We even do it in dreams with your eyes closed. You can be on the beach, with a lover enjoying the sun, just like it is real. Your mind has the ability to create space and time in dreams.
***Universe fined tuned for Us - Goldilocks principle***
Third bear finds it is just right.
Similarly the Cosmos has a long list (over 200 parameters) that are not too this, not too that for life to exist. [Many examples].. So exact just right for life to exist. Tweak any and you do not exist. They are not predicted by any theories. Why are they are exactly one way?
1) God did it
2) Anthropic Principle - We must find these conditions because if we are alive what else can we find. 10^500 universes, and we live in the one lucky one. The universe with all its parameters simply reflect the spatial temporal logic of the mind / conscious observer
Theories of everything, totality and completeness... These comprehensive theories, All of them, fail to take into account one critical factor and that is we are creating them. That we are the biological creature imbued with consciousness that fashions the stories that makes the observations and it gives names to things. Science has not confronted what is most familiar and most mysterious and that is consciousness.
For several centuries, a single mindset has dominated scientific thought. This model has had countless insights and applications that have transformed all of our lives. But it has now reached the end of its useful life. This old model proposes that the universe was until recently just a lifeless collection of particles just bouncing off each other and that they were following this predetermined rules that were mysterious in their origin. And the universe was presented like this watch that was wound up and that now is unwinding and allowing for a little quantum uncertainty and will unwind in a semi-predictable way. Of course there are lots of problems with this paradigm, some that are obvious, and some more subtle, but the overarching problems involves the origin of life and consciousness which is still an unknown process, and consciousness especially is poorly unstop.
Consciousness is not just a problem for biology its a problem for physics. There is nothing in physics that can explain how a group of molecules in the brain creates consciousness, especially how we subjectively feel that. Science cannot explain how consciousness arises from matter.
But consciousness aside, there are still a lot of problems with the standard model of physics like how the universe and all the laws of Nature just suddenly popped out of nothing one day for no apparent reason. And we call this titanic event the Big Bang and we don't even begin to understand the Big Bang even though we keep tinkering with all the parameters.
Science is good at figuring out how the parts works, but what eludes us is the big picture. We create this exquisite technologies from our ever growing knowledge of fundamental processes, but we do bad in one area which unfortunately encompasses all bottom line issues.
What is the nature of this thing we call reality; this universe as whole. Some scientists insist a theory of everything is just around the corner and eventually we'll know everything. And this hasn't happened for the reason that we have shunted a very critical component out of our view, and that is consciousness.
In short the attempt to explain the universe, its origins, its parameters and what's really going requires us to understand how the Observer, us, how our presence plays a role. Ultimately it is the biological creature and consciousness that makes the observations that creates the theories and our entire education system , and the construction of language itself revolves around that bottom line mindset that assumes there is a separate universe out there, which each of us individually arrives on a very temporary basics. It's further assumed that we accurately perceive this external pre-existing reality and we play little or no role in its appearance.
However starting in the 1920s, the results of experiments started to show just the opposite so the observer it turns out, critically influences the outcome. An electron can be both a particle and a wave but where the particle is located and where it is heading, depends on the actual act of observation itself and again this very famously demonstrated in the double slit experiment whereby your watch a particle or light pass through two slits. Particle if you look, wave if you don't that can go through both slits. And since the 1920s the list of paradoxes and intractable problems has continued to grow starting with those accompanying the Big Bang, for how could the universe arise out of nothingness.
Experiments during the past couple decades have shown that particles can influence each other instantaneously as if endowed with a kind of ESP. Puzzled scientists for decades.
But if you accept a life created reality at its face value, it becomes understandable. Take the seemingly undeniable logic that your kitchen is always present. You think its contents assume its familiar shapes and colors whether or not you are in it. But consider the colors and shapes of your kitchen are seen because the particles of light from the overhead bulb bounce off the various objects and interact with your brain through a complex set of retinal and neural intermediates. But on its own, light doesn't have any color, or brightness or any visual characteristics at all, it's merely an electromagnetic wave.
You think the kitchen is there in your absence, but the reality is that nothing remotely resembling what you perceive as your kitchen could possibly be there without your consciousness interacting with it.
Quantum physics comes at it from a much hotter angle and arrives at the same conclusion. But really it turns out your oven, fridge, etc are composed of a shivering swarm of energy and the results of quantum physics such as the double slit experiment, tell us, that not a single one of those particles or any of those objects exists in a definite space until you observe them. Rather they exists in a range of probabilities or waves of probability as Max Born once. Outside of that fact there is nothing there just statistical probabilities of particles existing in certain locations. So if they are not being observed, that cannot be thought of as having any real existence, either duration or position in space. It is only in the presence of the observer, that is when you go to the kitchen for a drink of water that the mind actually sets the scaffolding of these particles in place. It is not until the mind lays down the threads somewhere in that haze of probabilities that is described by the uncertainty principle can they be thought of as being either here or there or having actual position or physical reality.
Most people accept separate reality outside us more or less what we see.
So in this view the eyes are only clear windows that let in the world. The tree is still there and the moon still shines whether or not you are looking at them. Even animals perceive more or less the same reality which exists even if no eyes are seeing it.
This issue of "is it really out there?"
Once you fully understand that there is no external 'out there'outside of biological existence and consciouness, the rest more or less falls into place.