I have started this new thread post to explain some things that I obviously haven't explained adequately already. The purpose of this new thread is to explain why I have been talking about the concept of Indra's Net, introducing it into the MBT cosmology. As usual, I can't do it in just a bare minimum of words. Sorry about that Chief.

My entry point into considering the nature of Ultimate Reality comes from a rough and broad, lifelong survey of some portion of the concepts of shamans and mystics reported from before written languages to the present. To that I add gifts of information given to me and personal visions more or less like those of mystics of the past. From my viewpoint, this gives us concepts that match the observations and visions of mystics of the past as well as matching the concepts developed by Tom, in MBT. These are roughly speaking, an empty Void of vast size (the Nothingness that you somehow know is there), the Void plus a buzz of potential or sense of something about to happen (Plenum), a single Unified Whole containing everything including ourselves (you perceive yourself to be part of this Union), a Consciousness within which everything exists and a Network of individual consciousnesses on a communication network (the RWW) that are somehow also part of the One Consciousness (Indra's Net).

Many ancient peoples developed the concept that reality arises from consciousness rather than from the apparent physical reality that they perceived around them. And they knew of the non physical world of the spirits, accessible by shamans, that you could interact with within your mind and do things there that you could not do in the ordinary physical world. Basically they lacked the constant ‘entertainment' and distraction that modern society provides and lived more ‘in their heads' than we do so were more inclined to spirituality and metaphysics. They lived in an environment that naturally provided the quiet, uninterrupted times that we now must deliberately create in order to meditate and pursue access to our own consciousness.

Tom adds to the ancient concepts an awareness of digital technology, digital physics and information theory plus an evolutionary bootstrapping process and comes up with the cosmology of MBT. Everything is consciousness, and all one consciousness, but yet with intercommunicating individuated consciousnesses that are somehow part of the whole and exist simultaneously as individuals and yet part of the whole. It is these individuated consciousnesses that we are talking about as our higher selves and also the different aspects that I refer to as virtual beings that they appear to function as while at different times interacting with PMR, NPMR or bigger picture aspects of Ultimate Reality. More of this elsewhere.

I use the historical terminology Indra's Net because it includes both the concepts of the communication network, the RWW, and all of the interconnected beings, as our higher selves or our VR selves, that communicate over it. It also ties ancient historical descriptions into Tom's modern description in MBT. Ancient descriptions would have it as a net of jewels (of consciousness) which all reflect each other in their facets (the net). Tom describes this concept first with his mention of the RWW in Book 2, Chapter 6 - also, to a lesser extent in Book 2, chapters 20, 25 and 26. He gets back to it in Book 3, chapter 4 and 7 with some mention in chapters 9, 11 and 12.

I believe Tom to be one in a multi millennial long chain of metaphysicians making contact with and then developing an understanding of the true nature of Ultimate Reality. Bringing the ancient concept that reality arises from consciousness back into the forefront and hopefully into the mainstream, by adding modern digital concepts that explain what the ancients could not. That is, adding a description of how this can all work from a modern and scientifically understandable viewpoint that conceptually explains everything, all the things that mystics unaided by a scientific viewpoint and modern technological concepts could not explain, only gloss over with 'mystical' or poetic terminology.

Tom developed his understanding from his own personal explorations and scientific background, not from the records of the historical concept of Indra's Net and thus did not use this terminology in MBT. This is in the tradition of the Ancients whose work has been passed down individually, most of whom developed their own understandings based on their own mental explorations. While I muddy the waters somewhat in bringing this up, historical background and Indra's Net, I believe I also add a historical connection to shamanism and mysticism that can bring those inclined to these approaches to reality into an understanding and acceptance of MBT concepts as matching the insights of their traditions.

Besides my more historical knowledge based development of my understanding of Ultimate Reality and my own explorations, I also use the concept of Indra's net because I consider the computer game created by John Conway, The Game of Life, as an analogy as I visualize and seek to understand the bootstrapping process of The One into being. There are many Internet sites with versions of this game if you do a search. What you see if you play around with one of these instances of The Game of Life or look at various sites displaying advanced aspects of the game is cellular automata, a pattern of dots on a gridded screen that interact with each other as individual dots interact with adjacent dots based on a rule set. There is one site that displays an example of the simulation of a digital computer and all it's digital logic on a display of the screen of a Game of Life. Studying the Game of Life, which I highly recommend, will show you the result that the patterns may move, crash into each other, combine, mutate, grow or die or even display all of the digital logic capabilities of a digital computer. Think of this as some of the random data, the ones and zeros stored in the reality cells that existed in the Void before the bootstrapping of the One Consciousness into existence, moving and interacting based on some inter cell rule set. Think of this as the primal example of the iteration of the same evolutionary process that led to the evolutionary development of life in the shallow seas and tide pools of VR PMR Earth.

It is from something like these simple automata that eventually self replicating and then more complex automata must have developed, eventually leading to pattern matching and eventually to intelligence, mind, The One Mind/Consciousness and AUM. But somewhere in this process of development, the right process or rules must have evolved, effectively forming barriers, that absorbed any stray incoming automata, that kept randomly traveling, non intelligent automata from crashing into and destroying the budding intelligence on the other side of the barrier. Part of the consciousness-evolution process by which ever more complex and powerful functionality and eventually consciousnesses developed? Once an effective barrier is created by random interactions, it would persist and provide a relatively protected area in it's lee. Becoming more complex and more robust as part of the development of means to conserve evolutionary gains. On the way to making the jump from demolition derby between mindless cellular automata to self awareness, consciousness, intelligence and Mind. This is the heart of the bootstrapping process leading to The One Mind as an understandable concept, an example or visualization, not necessarily the way it was but a real and understandable possibility.

To give some more detail to the bootstrapping process, I propose the following visualization, linking the above to the eventual development of Indra's Net on the way to the development of Universal Consciousness and the One Mind, AUM. Comparable to this would be the evolutionary process in the shallow oceans and tide pools of PMR Earth by which self replicating chemicals led to the DNA/RNA double helix and the myriad varieties of life on PMR Earth. I suggest that in the bootstrapping process, it is natural for there to develop the barriers mentioned above, impenetrable to perambulating, non intelligent cellular automata as described above within the reality cell existence field of Ultimate Reality. Once such a barrier developed, it would of course persist, being indestructible or relatively so in the environment of the existence field. The risk avoidance and self defense strategies of mobility and aggression were not available in the Existence Field reality of the Bootstrapping Process of The One/AUM. When a being consists of data intermixed with processing areas in a uniform field of reality cells, mobility from reality cell to adjacent reality cell is not an option like in the Game of Life. Although data can be moved from reality cell to reality cell and processing means that cells form a processing area that must move data in, process it and then move it out to other areas for further processing; while the cells of that area are switching states continuously during the processing, mobility of the whole is not an option.

A little thinking should show that combining movement requirements with calculating requirements is just simply too much when calculating amounts to the interaction of adjacent cells according to some rule set. Your study of the Game of Life should have shown you that ‘calculation' consists of interaction of adjacent reality cells in one state, unperturbed, with reality cells in the alternate, perturbed, state according to the rule set for the reality field. So what is data and what is calculating functionality is entirely a matter of the relationships between the perturbed and unperturbed cells, resulting in interactions according to the rule set of the reality field. The interaction of the reality cells constitutes both data and processing code. Contact and interaction of data with data or data with the processing code in the wrong manner means destruction in this ‘environment' where there is no inherent difference between cells that contain data and cells that constitute processing functions. It would be basically the same as storing data in a modern computer by error in a memory area where processing code is stored. There is no way to guess how the ‘data' would be construed when treated as processing code. But a crash is most probable. Unexpected and abnormal results is absolutely certain.

This could, with a little imagination on our part in visualizing the process, readily lead to the development of automata containing ‘more data' and capable of more functions, protected behind barriers while incorporating into themselves or rejecting the random data coming in through the remaining opening(s) of their protective barriers and then eventually sending 'messages' to each other, perhaps with the intent of contributing to growth and spreading of new capabilities. Incorporating, as they find them useful, these incoming ‘messages' into their own being and also processing all their existing and new incoming information as best they are able into more and more capable selves. If we can believe that it happens in a tide pool with chemicals, surely we can relate this to automata in the existence field postulated as the basis for Ultimate Reality. Because existence is a fractal process, one should expect the patterns and processes at every level to resemble (be reiterations of) the patterns and processes at the origin.

This would mean that existence within the Consciousness Field of AUM/The One passes through a stage, something very like the corals and sponges of PMR Earth, of a community organism existing in a structure for physical protection and other beneficial results associated with food (data) capture and assimilation. The eventual end result being Indra's Net protectively housing ourselves and providing the communication infrastructure for us, or our predecessors, all as individuated intelligences. In a naturally developing (evolution including random elements) process, there will naturally develop a version of the 'bell curve' in the amount of data included and the associated capability of the automata existing within the barriers of Indra's Net on any context you choose. Some may be very "data filled, but mostly random" and dim bulbs. Some may be "less data filled, but non random", thus relatively 'brilliant' and providing some particularly valuable functionality. And a whole spectrum of intermixed possibilities. They can 'grow' by incorporating willing (or unwilling) neighbors or perhaps by developing a functionality shared amongst all or many of the individual developing consciousnesses to be. There are no resource limits or factors such as gravity fields to limit the growth, in any 'dimensionality', of these beings.

The One Mind then developed as one of these 'super' beings/automatons or from a collective of these individuated beings, the growth of one and/or the coalescence of many individuated beings into the One Mind or some other process that I have not thought of and we may never know. Alternatively, I think that there is a really high probability that the interconnected whole of all individuated beings existing within Indra's Net (and that would include us) in fact amounts to The One Mind, the core of AUM. Perhaps with one Mind/Being of a vastly higher order of magnitude capability as the director with many much smaller beings of our capability and below down to the dimmest bulb, "least aware" critter as the orchestra. Perhaps with no directing sub mind, but an organic combination of communication amongst all individuated minds resulting in The One Mind.

While we are told that we are part of The One Consciousness as existing within the whole, functional existence field, AUM, why could we not be in fact a functioning part of this whole of reality in a more direct sense. In a reality based on consciousness and with many iterative processes creating fractal patterns, it should not be surprising to see many processes repeated in many different contexts. It has been my understanding that in general, if an individuated being develops to a sufficiently high level, with sufficiently low entropy, it is integrated into ever higher levels of beings that supervise the multiple NPMR's and PMR's existing within The One Mind/AUM. This is not very different from recent discussions on the forums to the effect that sub sets of the higher self of individuated beings that are experiencing a PMR life, if successful and productive, can continue as a personality within the higher self in more than one or even a continuing series of experience packets/past lives. While it's greatest gains are integrated into our higher self, the whole being, the whole personality from a successful PMR experience packet may also continue as a functional unit, maintained as long as it remains a productive experiencer of VR lifetimes. This is likely to be based on the model provided by higher levels of the organized beings that supervise PMR and NPMR. The same reiterated pattern up and down the fractal scale of existence.

While there is now The One/The One Thing/The One Consciousness, AUM, It developed from the Void, Nothingness, in a very long, incremental, evolutionary development process. If it did not develop from the growth of individuated consciousnesses or from the amalgamation of multiple individuated consciousnesses, it must have leapt into being from nothing, in one jump; a very low probability occurrence. Logic and the fractal nature of the process of evolution (supported by the fact that we observe the Fundamental Process operating at every level within our view), says that it was an incremental process, an evolutionary or bootstrapping process. As I view this and describe it here, the infrastructure of Indra's Net and the existence within it of individuated consciousnesses, is a naturally occurring result of the process of growth or iterative becoming of The One Mind and the nature of the reality field and resulting digital functionality underlying all of Ultimate Reality/AUM. It developed in this way naturally from the nature and limitations of the Existence Field that was formerly the Void, the Plenum during the bootstrapping of The One/AUM.

The One Mind did not create us or cause us to develop, we, as individuated consciousnesses, appeared in the developmental process that led to the present reality, The One Mind, AUM or whatever term you choose to apply. Logically, at least by my logic, the principles and dynamics of existence necessarily result in the evolution of a structure and functionality such as this, Indra's Net, with many aspects of community organisms, corals and sponges, in the Earth's seas. It's a way to provide ready protection in the process of development into higher functionality beings when mobility and aggression found on Earth/PMR were not suitable. Furthermore, I believe that the use of the RWW that developed as part of the infrastructure of the Indra's Net aspect of reality is not just a matter of participation in PMR, NPMR, etc. I expect that there continues a substantial amount of the primary delta t cycles of Ultimate Reality that are still devoted to contact between and interaction with our individuated consciousnesses and higher levels of Ultimate Reality, up to and including in effect, the integrated whole that is The One Mind/AUM. That this being to being communication in fact is the basis for existence of The One Mind/Aum. Our 'day to day' interaction may be with individual 'guides' and the other participants in PMR, but the connections go from the bottom to the top via the RWW as they originally developed. Tom gave estimates of the relative number of base time cycles devoted to PMR and NPMR experience and also of the even greater amount of base time cycles devoted to the whole of AUM for unknown or general purposes. Time cycles of which we are not aware as they relate to infrastructure type interactions such as the operations of TBC including the VRRE and of data passage along the RWW. Many of these are simultaneous functions as the existence field of The One Mind is inherently capable of computation at all points/reality cells. But data must be generated and transferred before it eventually becomes the basis of the PMR or other VR experience and eventually experienced as the next increment of delta t Virtual Reality experience for each being in PMR and NPMR. All arising from the structure and functionality of Indra's Net , the Reality Wide Web, as it all developed during the bootstrapping process of The One Consciousness, AUM.

The collection of all individuated consciousnesses represents a vast accumulation of experience data and mental/processing power. We are talking about every individuated mind existing in all of AUM. This probably still functions as part of The One Mind, perhaps as an unconscious or subconscious much as neurology/psychiatry finds and describes low level processes in our VR brains and other higher level processes that are involved in decision making and those aspects of our mental life that we are not really conscious of. I consider The One as being short for The One Thing/The Only Thing that exists as I described it on my web site. The existence field of reality cells is inherently capable of computation at all points. Load cells with the right data/program and it can do its own thing. No doubt there are bits of 'intelligent' code everywhere from the automatic routing of data packets on the RWW to evaluation units within TBC that automatically scan across the array of beings in Indra's Net to give us each our turn at the consciousness engine or the local minimal consciousness function. There are vastly more functions than we can begin to know or even imagine. But there is also a Mind, a Consciousness that is also beyond what we can imagine in its capabilities. And while it includes everything as the total system, yet the part that creates this consciousness and what it scans are not the infrastructure type areas such as TBC and the RWW net. It has some measure of command and control of all of these functions, but not all of these things are conscious or part of the focus of consciousness of The One/AUM. While It needs a certain general level of command and control (like your brain controlling automatic body functions or the computer driving airport trams), it does not need conscious oversight of every reality cell. That would be impossible anyway.

What is focused on within this system level Consciousness is not known to us. But that must surely include consciousness of at least some of us at will. The ability to sample populations, check in on us individually or discern some collective attribute. And there must be specific functions that all of the data and computational power that is represented by the vast sum of all individuated consciousnesses must be capable of, whether we can imagine them or not. Perhaps as the 'back brain' or unconscious mind within the Over Mind that gets assigned the work of solving small or detail problems for the Consciousness focus of The One. Basically we, as an artifact of the fractal process, work that way being largely animated by the unconscious processes that go on within our minds. The posts that I have made on how the VRRE can create the apparent anomalies of PMR such as Suzanne Segal's loss of personal identity and other things, including those anomalies experienced by me, by varying the level of internal dialog or processing that is permitted into our consciousness. Are these not believable as artifacts of how the VRRE works? And there has long been a theme in science fiction of what do you do to occupy your mind when it becomes eons old. So I keep coming back to the cosmic soap opera as one of the things that we provide to The One Consciousness. But on the basis that all options are exploited if nothing else, I'm sure that there must be real functions, real profitability derived from our existence beyond possible pride of creation or amusement. It is an inherent characteristic of AUM that all profitable possibilities are exploited. Our individuated minds must provide some functionality to the Over Mind and may well collectively be That Mind/AUM.

If you can put the above into a conscious model in total, you will understand why I insert the name Indra's Net and the functionality I describe into the functionality Tom originally described for AUM in his TOE. It provides a fuller model to understand the concepts in MBT of an evolutionary bootstrapping operation. It also shows the historical connection and reminds us that Tom's creation of MBT is also a continuation and expansion of all that has gone before. I am slowly working mentally through this MBT model and expanding things that as an engineer, rather than a physicist/cosmologist, I can incrementally add to understanding. In this case, I'm adding a concept that explains more of the details of the bootstrapping operation and how the infrastructure of AUM might have developed in the way that it did and how it might function. Also what our functionality as individuated minds might provide within or actually collectively be the One Mind. This is not offered as a perfect presentation or something presented to me from higher authority. I welcome your comments and questions.

I wish to clearly and sincerely thank Tom for his insights as I asked him to critique this essay before posting and have incorporated his wisdom. I hope that the above contributes to your understanding of the Virtual Reality Rendering Engine and MBT in general and why Tom puts up with my monkeying around with his creation, My Big TOE.
Ted Vollers

Hi Ted. I enjoyed your analysis and explanation on Indra's net, I'll be giving it some thought tonight. Within the NPMR's there are communities of entities with similar goals who have subroutines running to filter possible damaging input? I clearly get the impression of our VR bodies and virus and bacteria penetration into our systems,complete with defenses against data corruption and co-opting. This too would be an evolutionary process in the big picture. I suspect there are many similar processes evident in PMR VR that can be extrapolated to NPMR interaction. An engineers practical, object oriented pattern recognition is complementary to Toms' physics background. Keep up the good work my friend :)

Good and evil are relative. Could this be a simple basis for the concept?

_________________
always, John

Tom: Good post Ted - interesting and thought provoking. As I have said many times, the value of a model is judged by its usefulness. For example, the flat earth model is still the basis for most surveying (such as laying out home plots in a residential subdivision). It is much more useful for that function than a spherical earth model. Of course the actual Earth is not a sphere either. Ted's model is useful because it provides insight into possible logical processes that may have led to the consciousness system that defines our reality and is the basis of our individual and collective existence.

Ted: It has been my understanding that in general, if an individuated being develops to a sufficiently high level, with sufficiently low entropy, it is integrated into ever higher levels. ..that sub sets of the higher self of individuated beings that are experiencing a PMR life, if successful and productive, can continue as a personality within the higher self in more than one or even a continuing series of experience packets/past lives. While it's greatest gains are integrated into our higher self, the whole being, the whole personality from a successful PMR experience packet may also continue as a functional unit, maintained as long as it remains a productive experiencer of VR lifetimes.

Tom: A discussion of being integrated into The One, or into "higher levels" (the laboratory staff) while at the same time retaining one's dearly beloved personal identity developed within the Petri dish seems to keep popping up in this forum. Ted offers a good explanation here, but perhaps a simple analogy will help spread some light. Imagine: The engineering dept in a large company realizes that at any one time 3,000 desktop computers on the company net are sitting idle. They upload a smidgeon of software to every computer in the company so that they can combine all those unused processing cycles into a massively parallel array of processors that collectively make up a monstrously fast and capable super computer able to simultaneously crunch many tall and complex algorithm buildings in a single nanosecond bound. To avoid imposing on the users of these computers, they only grab unused cycles at the lowest priority - so each computer services its primary user's needs first.
To make this analogy fit better, each desktop computer needs to be an individual being, and Ted's phrase (15th paragraph -- as copied above): "if successful and productive." translates to: "if each individual desktop computer could grow/evolve enough well organized (lower entropy) extra capacity." So let's imagine these computers can/must evolve increased capacity beyond what they need to support "local operations" rather than saying that they just happen to have extra cycles that are unused. A bit unrealistic in terms of desktop computers, but it adds to the value of the analogy.
Note: All the desktops are netted, while those who have developed/evolved extra low entropy capacity are also integrated into the one super computer (they are all a part of The One Network and some are also part of The One Super Computer that resides within the network and executes The Big Jobs). However, each of the individual desktop computers retain their former stand alone and company-wide netted functionally as they serve their individual users (now themselves) individual needs. Their users can detect no difference. They are still individual in every way that there were previously individual yet they are also part of the One Netted System, and some may be part various programs solving higher level problems on The One Super Computer - and all aspects of each computer function simultaneously, i.e., at the same time. OK, this is not a perfect analogy, but it does point out to the reader that one should not be constraining a digital netted system like consciousness with one's PMR habits of thought, which require everything outside of yourself to be separate an in its own box. In the digital world of parallel processing, it is easy to be a multidimensional multifaceted being.

Tom C

Tom,

What you describe is in fact the 'hot new concept' in super computing as being developed within the computer industry referred to as 'cloud computing'. This article linked below seems to describe the original concept. It is something that Google seems to have developed and used within their own search engine business although the programming is proprietary and a business secret. But Google, IBM, Yahoo, Amazon, Carnegie Melon Univ. and others have started a consortium of sorts to establish general purpose and open source instances of clouds for study, analysis and software development with the basic idea that these clouds or networks of servers become in essence, distributed super computers where capacity can be added or upgraded easily at will. Their present intent is to establish a number of clouds around the world dedicated to research on cloud computing. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/co ... 925836.htm

This article is quite long but seems to be definitive about the origin and development of the concept and also the current state of development. This is expected to provide a completely new class of software and approaches to large computational problem solving and data mining. Also expected to provide a new level of improved accessibility for researchers or smaller businesses needing access to super computers to solve their research or number crunching problems.

I did not attempt to put anything about this into my post above as it was already so long and been so long in development. If you should read this whole article, you can readily see how this relatively new to IT concept can be related to what I posted above and what Tom posted here. A search on cloud computing will bring up further concepts of cloud computing as everyone want's to get on the bandwagon. Another iteration of Life copying Art or rather Science copying AUM, rediscovering the wheel, although they do not know about or understand this 'prior application' of the concept.

Ted

I have some questions about the whole merging with the One scenario. I understand the computer metaphor, but am having trouble shoe-horning it into how our system actually works.

Is it true that Each individual consciousness in our PMR (a pre-school for consciousness, as stated before on these forums) comes from our, for lack of a better term, Wider Self?

This simple consciousness is made up of the same "stuff" as the Wider Self, so it is also our Wider Self in a sense, yet it has free will independent of the Wider Self.

This simple consciousness starts out with in its own processing space with no apparent contact with the Wider Self.

As the consciousness lowers its entropy and through training (meditation) contact is re-established (though, from the Wider Self's perspective, there was always a "link").

As the simple consciousness grows more sentient in NPMR and lowers its entropy, the entire Wider Self (of which it is a part) benefits.

What I have so far described (and hopefully described accurately) is a scenario that happens when a person is born in our PMR (and other PMRs that share a similar rule set as ours).

At this point there could be (for this purposes of this post) 2 entities with free will. The Wider Self, which decided to incubate a new consciousness in our PMR, and the incubated-now-grown-up-some consciousness. I realize that there are a lot more of these grown-up consciousnesses around, but let's disregard them for now.

Does a merging with the Wider Self consolidate the number of free will entities to 1?
Does the merging, from the perspective of the incubated consciousness make it appear that the incubated consciousness is now the free will consciousness of the Wider Self?
Does the merging, from the perspective of the Wider Self make it appear that the Wider Self is still the free will consciousness of the now-merged Wider Self?
As I try and stretch my imagination for this scenario, it makes sense in a way that these 2 free wills could possibly merge where both think they are in the driver's seat due to the fact that they now have merged identities and the previous 2 sentences could be considered true and there be no paradox.

Could this scenario I just described, if true, continue all the way up the chain so that at any level, the merging doesn't destroy the individual identity/free will of the merging entities but makes something more than the sum of the parts that merged?
Also, if the Wider Self decides to incubate another consciousness in our PMR, could this be considered "reincarnation" even though the 2 incubated consciousnesses are more like siblings than what the generic interpretation of reincarnation is?

Or maybe this merging doesn't need to happen and any free will consciousness is left alone, benefiting the Wider Self that created it yet not merging the free wills so that 2 free wills become 1 free will.

What are your thoughts, Tom and Ted? Am I on the right track or did I make a logical error in the beginning?

JoshM,

For the moment, let's say only that there is only ever one of us. This is what I originally started to describe when I started working on this as an essay to post. I had been saying things about our virtual reality selves as sub sets of our total, higher, self that I was having trouble making clear. So in the process of trying to clarify this aspect of what I was saying I decided, based on conversations on the board, that a lot of what I was saying about Indra's Net and why I was saying it was not clear to readers. I had said things on my web site that were not being noted here so I tried to clarify this as well and the essay got really long as it led to new things to say. Then I asked for Tom's comments and our following discussion made it even longer. So I split it into the above and another part that will discuss the questions you ask. I'm just a little too slow in merging the discussion into the essay as a smooth flowing composition to have answered your questions before you asked them. I think we have a lot of clarification and new information from Tom that will make this an interesting addition and something of an extension of understanding. Too many things happening at one time however. When I get it completed and run it past Tom again for any further clarification or corrections, I'll post it, link it from here as well as where I originally got the idea and send you a heads up.

Thank your for the good questions. I'll use it for a check list to make sure everything is covered when I get through.

Ted Vollers

Below is the link I promised to the follow on portion to this thread discussing our Total or Higher Self and our virtual reality selves.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2826

Ted

Let me start by saying I have not read any Robert Monroe books, and I am only up to eight stars in MBT. I do not have that information to assist or confound me here. I wrote some of the ideas I have developed over time to Tom during my initial contacts with him, and will put them out here and now. First, I write how I see reincarnation and then give a brief description of my experiment to provide support for reincarnation as a scientific theory. I have read Ted's two major posts as requested and desired, but not the third put in on 9/15/08 as the link puts me back at his initial "why talk" post rather than at a new one when I tried it (twice) at 1pm pacific.

As said I have no experience with meeting another me such I read a little here about RM doing. In my naïve view there is no problem and it isn't all so complex. I guess I should start with the/my puzzle concept. This is what I wrote on 9/01/08 when I realized my and you all's idea were fitting in and I wanted to try and put my stuff in words.

What I believe
We are energy; everything is energy, intelligent energy. Energy is neither created nor destroyed so what we are also is not created (it always has been) nor destroyed. Information is part of our energy and all of our experiences are information bits. Each of us is putting together our own puzzle gathering pieces that fit from nouns we interact with in some way. Our own piece of the puzzle is also part of a bigger puzzle of all there is, and once all the pieces come together, the big picture will emerge. Then the energy will collapse like a wave function and a new everything will bang into being with a new puzzle with completely differently shaped pieces that will eventually coalesce into new mini-puzzles through experience of the energy units there. These mini-puzzles gaining there own information through experience will eventually become complete, and then all the pieces will again come together making the big picture for those units to see before collapsing and renewing again. The Everything recycles, ever moving toward more intelligent order with each cycle although I envision it as endless cycles, no beginning (we were not created) and no end (we cannot be destroyed). We access our material lives requirements after each life and pick our family and experiences needed. There had always been a flaw here in my theory as I could not fathom how all the experiences could be planned like that if we all have free will, which I think we do. The digital computer model of Tom Campbell has filled in this puzzle piece. Our lives are planned but only in probabilities of specific events occurring as needed, the computer model allows this preplanning to function. If an event is missed due to free will of all units and there are no back up plans, then the next life plan will try again. We are also here for others needs for their plan, and their plan might not be in our best interest but the experience is always worth at least the information allowed from that experience. I think that the physical material thing DNA is where the information we gather is stored, if a storage device is even required for that energy. There are several areas that do not have the pieces gathered, but learning or gathering pieces is fun so that is fine.
END OF WHAT I BELIEVED 9/01/08

Ok, the puzzles are fractal and the unit of consciousness UOC Tom untangled that we are is now represented by me with a small i, italicized i preferably. It could indicate we are talking about what remains upon leaving the suitcase in this life experience, if we are talking about our own unit iUOC or just i any other UOC could be "your i" etc. It is very digital to me and therefore seems a good representation, again I am naïve of much terminology here but see there is an issue with it.

Here is what I wrote down by hand, not a usual activity for me, after reading Ted's "why talk" post this last weekend. It might be redundant to the above, but I'll just type it out anyway. Oh, bty, mail just came (1:30 pm) and I got the first of the three Monroe books I ordered, the second in the series I believe so I won't start reading it yet.

9/13/08
The meeting of other self's is missing for me, if that is what having to refer to different self's concerns. This "unit of consciousness" (MBT), or "i" (I had a capital I there before typing this up) that I previously referred to as my soul or what remains included the information from all of my life experiences (PMR and otherwise, just added). This body is the suitcase i chose for this particular (and peculiar I might add) experience, and it was delivered to the family best fit for the experiences i planned (that were programmed MBT) to learn what i need to gather pieces for my puzzle (mi?, i is now a pain in a word programming sense). Here is my side note for the puzzle thing, thanks for that method Tom.
Each unit of consciousness (UOC) "starts" (this would be at moment of bang) as a piece of ONE (AUM) puzzle that itself (The I or The UOC perhaps) is a puzzle, that then might be a piece of another puzzle fractally encompassed having banged out complete then fractalled out chaotically. Each separate level of puzzles interlock into ONE puzzle eventually where all the separate pieces which were once puzzles fractally now can see the BIG PICTURE, then implosion and a new bang and new picture.

Ok UOC's in this piece (AUM) whose have programs that coincide and that free will has allowed to actualize (rather than collapse?) interact and exchange puzzle pieces keeping those that fit directly popping them in place setting them aside where they may interlink to finish an outer section, one that will eventually link up to other i's, while not keeping those that do not fit our puzzle. Perhaps keeping them to see if they fit in other i's we know puzzle. I believe I may have had a few pieces not linked that MBT and Tom and all you i's have supplied the missing pieces for allowing a much more complete and clearer view for i. I'm throwing so much out here because I am trying so hard to return the favor.

Any, I wrote more then, last weekend, but it is pretty repetitive to I'll leave it and get to the experiment design. The puzzle becomes more organized, and is fractal, very MBT and Ted.

Basically I know that information/knowledge is foundational, and that everything is energy, matter in this PMR. Energy now I understand is based on consciousness, consciousness is foundation. Actually before now I always considered myself (i) to be a spark (more like a flake really;)) off of the source of all information with the goal of learning/knowing everything about what it is to be a human (requiring reincarnating into as many situations as possible timewise, one couldn't be a Neanderthal once they combined with Homo Sapiens for example. Having watched "Tribal Odyssey" on cable last night there are opportunities for indigenous experience still today though). Consciousness (my old energy) is neither created or destroyed therefore it is what remains. It has never made any sense that all our experiences are for not and just go poof at death of the suitcase, it has to be what remains, and now I know it is in digital form. We didn't invent binary code, Tom recognized it is all, and again I haven't got that far in MBT. So data is stored and get uploaded into a new suitcase (what's the MBT term?) to be built upon symbiotically. As I (this is the bette I) understand it every body has a different DNA code, a quaternary code, so there should not be two bodies having the same code that are not twin/triplets etc. The plan is to gather DNA from participants now to be checked against DNA of participants in the next generations to see if there are any matches. This is the longest Longnitudal type study ever designed possibly, but it is a scientific testable theory.

All my attempts at terminology are just pieces being offered for fit. All this is presented it that context as well. I hope whoever reads this gets something from it, and thank you for your time in reading it.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

In another thread: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2850&p=4766#p4766 Ted also said:



Dan:
Perhaps, due the limitations of perspective and PMR language/concepts, I am just misunderstanding what you mean but - That something SEEMINGLY came "out of nothing" is a given ("mystical" in MBT terms) and needs no further comment, but that Many (consciousness) should precede One (consciousness) does not seem likely to me.

Why? Because if reality is truly fractaline in nature or IOW follows the (esoteric) Law of Correspondences (as above, so below and vicey versey :-) we should be able to find SIMILAR examples elsewhere in nature (nature, in this case, being "All that is").

The shadows cast on the wall should be related to what is going on outside the cave - one SHOULD be able to observe long enough, collect enough data, that the data begins to form a coherent (visible) pattern (map or model), which should continue to increase in "resolution" over time as one continues to gather additional data IF AND ONLY IF one doesn't get locked into the belief that they have found THE answer and thus stop (really) looking (gathering new data).

What I am getting at is I can't think of any examples in nature (PMR) where Many XYZ's precedes a One XYZ and following the law of correspondences (fractaline nature of (true) reality) we should be able to find some.

Think of an (human) egg fertilized by a sperm, for example -

1) first it is a One EGG (in MBT terms this would be primordial consciousness or AUO),

2) then it is "fertilized" and becomes a One CELL (some stuff separated from other stuff i.e. nucleus, etc - in MBT terms a "reality cell"),

3) then the fertilized egg EXTREMELY rapidly expands (seemingly without limit) becoming 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 .... cells that gradual specialize and organize themselves together (by some as yet esoteric magic) until,

4) you get a One ORGANISM capable of supporting awareness (consciousness plus ability to experience, in MBT terms - AUM) and then,

5) that One organism begins to REALLY evolve into a much more experienced (AWARE) consciousness (as opposed to "just" a primordial (seed) (potential) consciousness of low or no awareness such as AUO, experiencing nothing (because there is no "else" TO experience)).

It looks to me like at any point in time (from our perspective "within" PMR) OUR, yours and mine, collective level of entropy (including everything that makes up and contributes to "All that is") IS AUM's CURRENT (from our perspective) measure of (average) entropy. In short (and likely inflammatory terms :-) "God" is BECOMING just as we are - along WITH us.

(As a COMPLETE aside - I have run previously ran across some teachings that the name of god in the old testament - where he gives his name to Moses as "I am that I am" - is a VERY poor translation and more accurately could be rendered "I am becoming that which I decide to become".)

Now at any point in those steps (above), depending SOLELY on one's POV (perspective), you COULD say there is a "one" thing, either a One egg (AUO - Absolute Unbounded Oneness), a One cell (reality cell), or a One organism (collection of organized cells or AUM - Absolute Unbounded Manifest) but at each point that "one thing" is a unique thing (from all the others) and therefore IMCLOE it looks very inaccurate and misleading (perhaps a complete and utter fallacy) to say that the many XYZ's became a one XYZ.

More accurately IMO, Many ABC's (reality cells) evolved out of a Oneness of proto-consciousness (AUO - without ability to DO/experience ANYTHING because it is "All that is" and yet only One) and gathered to become a One XYZ (proto-consciousness PLUS - and it is a HUGE plus from our POV :-).

That may SEEM like semantics or relativity due to PMR language/concepts but I do not think this is the case, assuming my understanding is not too far off the mark, I think it is inaccurate and such NOISE leads it exponentially increasing corruption of the original "signal".

IMCLOE,

Dan

PS: You know, now that I have written all of the above (which I will post anyway), it looks to me like if, in that first quote of yours above Ted, if you simply changed the verbs to represent present (and future) tense, for the most part I would find little to argue with, it might look something like:

"The consciousness potential of primordial The One/The One Thing/The One Consciousness is not likely to have leapt into being in one jump - this would be a very low probability occurrence - it is becoming fully actuallized via an ongoing, incremental, evolutionary development process via individuated consciousnesses or from the amalgamation of multiple individuated consciousnesses. "

_________________
"Whenever one's conceptualization of reality (or of anything real) rests upon the absolute, the infinite, or the perfect, one should question the underlying assumptions very closely and expect to find a fallacy." - Uncle Tom Campbell

Well, where is the fun in that, hu Dan? ;)

Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Ted:



How was that "inter cell rule set" created?



Where did it get the "substance" from to grow from the Void?






Here you say that there is a part that creates "this consciousness". So you said that the One Mind did not create us but something in consciousness can create. Are you saying that even though there is something with capability to create, it did not and does not use this capability to create "us" (from previous quote). What is "us"? All IUOCs? Are you saying that IUOCs are not created, but something else is created? IUOCs existed from the beginning?

How does your model grow in bits / new IUOCs / information capacity? Where does it get the new "substance" from for new beings or new computational areas?

Claudio

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

Claudio,

You will just have to wait and buy my book. I am writing a new chapter, starting with what Tom and I worked on together kind of filling in some spots on the model and that is posted here in this thread. In this new chapter, I work through in relative detail the process from the Void through the present describing a logical progression and including references to mathematical research and know concepts of pure mathematics or other fields as developed here in PMR. A more detailed discussion of how things might logically work, come into existence. Tom has a copy of my work so far and I will update him as it progresses. Then, if not before, he will provide any comments and thoughts he might want to contribute. He seems to not want to potentially interfere in the creation process but let me take it as far as I can on my own. Some other board members have copies of the work in progress and provide some feed back on understandability, etc.

Once it is done, you can blow it all to pieces with your superior logic.

For the moment, we have no way to say how the inter cellular rule set for interaction came about or works. Presumably it is inherent to reality. That there is one that works and produces reality as we know and exist within it is what matters.

The substance is the Void. No one knows what it is. The stuff that dreams are made of?

Do you not remember the post that Tom made not so long ago (can't look it up right now) in which he described how The One Consciousness consists of the union of the IUOCs interacting over the RWW. A sort of radical viewpoint (which aspect Tom commented on) which several readers commented on very enthusiastically. A Union and an Interdependence. Tom has also discussed the creation of new IUOCs just recently. Proto IUOCs existed from near the beginning, became The One Consciousness and then were gifted by the One Consciousness with consciousness after it bootstrapped into being, thus converting them into IUOCs. Tom discusses this in MBT as I remember.

Either new reality cells come from out of the Void as required in sort of a crystallization process or they exist already, but just not used by AUM to contain data as part of itself. We don't know. Tom never described the substance of the Void nor can I. Perhaps it is just 'turtles all the way down'.

Ted

I think dreams are information and stored in a media called Consciousness. That's how it is in MBT.



Yes, he did. He called it Consciousness.



Not a bad attribute for a chronic misinterpreter :)



Well, in the original MBT from the book, new reality cells come from within AUM by doing a "subdivision". In MBT AUM can copy an IUOC or create a new one from data within itself. It does not need any external substance, it can do it from its own substance, called Consciousness.

A related post from Tom regarding fixed number of IUOCs and how AUM can create new IUOCs and populate VRs with those proto IUOCs:



Extracted from: http://www.my-big-toe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3930&hilit=RWW&start=30


Claudio

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <