I'm reading Jim's book just now and am enjoying much of the speculation over self awareness.

I'm interested in Jim's response (and the response of other forum members) about the following hypothesis:

The universe is an organism/program with the purpose of running through sequences/scenarios in order to learn about itself further or keep itself amused in the vastness of nothing. With that intention, every aspect of itself - even at the microcosmic level - possesses some level of consciousness. The more complex the system, the more self aware. That feeling of being and existence that each of us feels is the self awareness of the universe itself. The personality is merely an avatar for the universal consciousness to experience itself subjectively from different angles and perspectives. The reason the universe is expanding is because the system is running through more sequences and becoming more complex.

Just something that's been playing on my mind for a while.

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media underground

i kinda feel like that the sense of presence one has is in actuality the primary illusion ... by being focused on the phenomenal world , the sense of "not being there" is what this presence is. once you look for your own presence imo it becomes very elusive , and i would say non-existent , at least in an experiential sense . if this makes any sense at all . (my programmers told me to smoke some pot before i posted this)

Fascinating! Maybe you're the programmer.

Was it like an OBE? Did you see yourself? Have you read anything about the effects of DMT and "lifting the veil?"

Also, thanks so much for joining the forum. We really need a couple more prolific posters and you have that potential.

Bump! http://fusionanomaly.net/

Fusion Anomaly is the electric KoolAid version of wikipedia. In this little acid trip website, reality is only what the mind experiences.

hi decee,
welcome to the forum and thanks so much for the post!
if you feel like sharing more, we'd all be very interested. what were you doing prior to the experience? what was the last thing you remember before the experience? if you were doing drugs, which one was it? similar experiences are reported by people using DMT, although it is also a naturally occurring chemical in the brain. even anecdotal evidence of programmed reality is very interesting, especially if not drug-induced.

Guys & gals, I just signed up. I think this idea is very interested, but at this point, I am not sure what to really think on the matter. When you are cut with a knife, it doesn't leave a perfect scar but rather a jagged non uniformed structure. You will also feel the pain that feels very real. However, if you were to not have an active central nervious system, you wouldn't feel anything....our conciousness somehow seems tied to our senses.

With that being said, this is my experience I had 10 years ago.

I had a panic attack when I was younger. The first thing that happened was i could feel things a lot more. When I ran, I could literally feel my tongue going back and forth in my mouth. Everything was in slow motion. If you were to blink very fast, that is what reality appeared like. Things appeared slightly distorted and things seemed to be almost black / white. My sound was very real to me. When I spoke, it sounded like how others heard it. Time, this was very bizarre. It came to a screeching halt. Imagine looking at a clock and one second passes and it feels like you just lived a whole life, and that is what seemed to be ocurring. It still feel, to this day, that I was either day dreaming full dreams in between those seconds or experiencing potential real lives in between. I have considered they were all of the possibilities that could have occurred but didn't and I was experiencing some of them in between. After one "frame" was over with, I was pulled back to the "true reality". I can't say for sure what was going on as I don't remember anything from these tangents but it was very bizarre. You can ask me questions if you want but I am not sure if there is much else to tell. One thing I have thought of that is really bizarre is that, what if when we die, we don't die but, instead, resort back to another time or another branch off of this reality. Maybe we could somehow choose. I have even considered, weird as it may seem, that we could do it now if we were experienced enough in meditation but highly unlikely. And if something were to be possible, would we lose our memories that we have from the future? This is the problem with this thinking. I feel we have some sort of conciousness, otherwise I would be nothing more than a robot that isn't aware he is alive, but on the flip side, if your brain was to get damaged, would you lose some conciousness? I have read on the matter and some speculate conciousness forms around the time language is formed. Others use the mirror test but skeptics say some animals may not see properly enough for that to be a good measure of conciousness. Pretty much all animals feel pain, so do they then, even lower forms of life, have some sort of conciousness? I have considered (I believe this is buddism or something), that our conciousness evolves over time and we can manifest ourselfs in to bigger and smarter shells. It is nice if this is the case as we could live again, but it also sucks if our memories are erased. If we were to live 2+ lives with our memories being erased and there is an afterlife, how would the two lives be pieced together? Since our way of thinking is shaped by memories and genetics? Although science dictates survival of the fittest, I still believe that our minds or something else at work helps this process. Sort of like thinking that you need to be smarter, you might actually increase your intellegence or possibly will your kid to be more intellegent than you etc.. wanting your kid to be taller might make for a higher likelyhood of it happening. Just a weird thought and someone probalby could prove it wrong, although the power of the mind has been shown to do some crazy things for an individual.

Hi t3,
Thanks for sharing and for joining the forum. Great to have you. You are thinking about all the cool stuff. I hope that exploring the site a little more sheds some light on some of your questions. (it will probably just raise more questions ) Your panic attack experience is really interesting and, just by itself, seems to lend some support to the programmed reality idea. Perhaps your consciousness was experiencing reality in a similar manner to when a scratched CD skips and repeats in a CD player. It is all just data that is being read at the wrong rate. Regarding your thoughts about consciousness...



... here is an excerpt from my book that considers such ideas:

Think about what it means to make a decision. The cashier gave you too much change – do you tell him/her? It seems like you make your choice based on past events (your parents taught you that it was deceitful to take something that shouldn’t be yours) or the current state of your mind (the cashier is really cute, maybe I’ll get a few points by pointing out the mistake). Upon further analysis, it really seems that the exact state of your brain (memories, neural pathways and triggers) and the state of external stimuli might be fully responsible for each decision and action. However, one could make the same argument for a computer, which function is based on the concept of a finite state machine (each action is fully determined by the state of the machine and its inputs). This idea essentially boils down to us being nothing more than robots. Are you okay with that?

What about the following scenario:

Two kids with the same parents grow up in the same environment. Why do they frequently have a completely different set of values? One gives the money back to the cashier without question; one keeps the money without question. Why? It can’t be purely due to genetics. And it can’t be purely due to upbringing. Determinists would argue that slight differences in genetics or environment may have a domino effect on the value systems of the individual. But, could it also be due to the possibility that these are two different souls, which have evolved differently? Believers in reincarnation might say that the former has learned a universal lesson in a previous incarnation and is perhaps an older, or more experienced, soul. It is therefore natural for that person to make such a decision, whereas the sibling’s soul has not yet learned that universal lesson. We can’t be sure, but it does seem odd that people often talk of the deep personality differences between their children that are observable at such a young age that environmental differences are precluded. This tends to lend support to the idea that there is a “ghost in the machine.”

If the determinists are correct, what’s the point in following any laws, or codes of moral responsibility? Everything you do is beyond your control anyway. We would have total chaos if everyone really believed in this. Perhaps that says something about people’s deep-seated beliefs.