This is an Essay by Anthony North
Many people believe in the existence of higher consciousness in the universe, yet we’re often told that such concepts are unexplainable. I’m not sure this is true. Could we rationalize such a thing?
In my essay, The Mystical Seven, I showed how the ‘law of large numbers’ could be applied, at least philosophically, to such a concept. Stated simply, the law indicates that greater order manifests the greater the number of things involved.
I applied this to the universe.
I argued that it could allow greater order in the clusterings of existence, working up from the individual, the species, the planet, the solar system, galaxy, the island universe and the universe itself.
However, it is maybe time to take this concept a little further. Now, I am not talking about an ‘intelligence’ or ‘rationality’ as we understand it. Rather, could higher consciousness be simply a ‘process’ underlying reality?
What can we say about the concept?
Well, such a consciousness would suggest an interlinking of everything in the universe. Further, as it would be on an information level, we could argue that all information in the universe would be within it.
We would have, in effect, a universal database of all thought and action. Bringing back the ‘law of large numbers’, could the process ‘access’ such information in such a way as to be analogous to an internet search engine?
What would be involved in creating greater order?
We could say that it would involve a process we presently understand as coincidence. Consider a ‘lower’ order of consciousness – the person, for instance – wanting to access the system.
A key word would be applied, and the search engine would throw up possibilities. This is coincidental arrangement of information, yet behind it has been a spark of intelligent input to the system.
We’re often told we live in an information universe.
If this is so, and such a system could be applied, then the coincidental arrangement of information could actually be coincidental arrangement of events, thought or action in the universe itself.
The possibilities here are many. For instance, much of the paranormal could be applied to such a system. But most importantly, the system could actually sculpt the universe as it goes along. Consider input at the planetary level actually formulating the hard reality we experience as the planet.
Further implications can be seen in the ‘basic design function’ used in computing. This function is a simple instruction to a program. The program then evolves new programs to carry out a specific function requested in the initial design function. Intelligence has thus been inputted into a conceptual process.
Hence, such a higher consciousness would be essentially mathematical, without intelligence or reason behind it. It merely exists to be used and adapted by intelligences at a lower level of order.
A further implication of the system would be that knowledge would no longer be of an explanatory nature, but creative – which does, of course, agree with ideas in particle physics concerning reality being created from an observation.
Of course, this is exceptionally speculative. But the reality is, it is untrue to say that a ‘system’ of thought cannot be used to attempt explanation of higher consciousness.
Anthony North, July 2008
