I'm now in the process of perusing Tom's three-volume tome and Brian Whitworth's Web articles. So far I have only consumed mere snippets and I'm awed by the implications of Tom's and Brian's ideas. But I cannot also help but marvel at the similar concept previously advanced by predecessors to Tom and Brian. Jacques Vallee, for example, was a UFO pioneer with a background in computer science who regarded the universe as an information retrieval system.

Vallee seems to have had an inkling of the universe as a virtual reality program back in the seventies. I believe this was at a time when virtual reality had not emerged in current form and when computer programming had not reached today's level of sophistication. (But then, many computer pioneers may have latched onto this idea from the getgo - just failed to verbalize it). A Ph.D. in computer science himself, Vallee was investigating UFO phenomena and came to a startling conclusion:

Paranormal phenomena like UFOs seem very similar to supernatural entities that have historically been given pagan or religious meaning. Elves, fairies, goblins, sylphs, and lake monsters, for example. Or apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Catholic miracles (Fatima). Or just plain angels and demons.

Vallee came to view these things as "control systems"; something or someone is behind these phenomena to control human belief systems and to create "myths." In fact, the same entity seems to be driving these phenomena, since the circumstances surrounding such sightings or religious miracles are remarkably similar.

Vallee concluded that a universe where such events occur can be better understood as a randomized database rather than as a spatial-time reality. Instead of living in a three-dimensional Cartesian reality, we might actually be living in a world where information is constantly being retrieved through association. Instead of time, we are simply progressing through events that are being summoned and retrieved. So consciousness is not just local to the human brain; rather, consciousness is an act of constant and shifting retrieval of information and images through key words and association.

If that is our reality, then time and space are simply an illusion! Actually, it is the illusion of causation. It is association which is deriving the universe, not sequential causation (e.g., occasionalism). What, then, are the information and images that are being retrieved for the observer? Often, they are symbols and images that evoke powerful emotions in the observer -- viz, religious and supernatural phenomena.

I don't think the significance of Jacques Vallee's insight has been acknowledged, since he's been immersed in the fringe field of ufogy. But consider the implication: a universe structured this way seems to imply an external source (i.e., a programmer or an outside power source). It seems to imply a master programmer or an active manipulator who has launched a game of simulation to test human beings. It seems to operate like a "control system" in which humans are like rats running through mazes and pressing levers.

But what is the simulation for? Is it for the programmer's own sadistic pleasure? Perhaps to test our "free will" and see if we choose good over evil? Or perhaps simulations are so common that the programmer has become jaded and abandoned the effort, leaving it to our own devices? (Here, we're back to square one in wondering about a universe ruled by a benevolent, malevolent or apathetic creator).

As Vallee writes in Dimension: A Casebook fo Alien Contact (1988): "I would like to step outside the conditioning maze and see what makes it tick. I wonder what I would find. Perhaps the terrible superhuman monstrosity the very contemplation of which would make a person insane. Perhaps a solemn gathering of sages? Or the maddening simplicity of unattended clockwork."

This is fascinating stuff. And this type of analysis gave ufology an air of sophistication while it lasted. But I find this to be especially intriguing since the idea of a universe as a data retrieval and control system seems to anticipate the ideas of Tom and Brian.

Have you ever meditated? All those things you speak of, which I am very interested in as well as I subscribe to the Ancient Astronaut Theory still even after Tom's MBT model answered how it could be, can be explained by understanding that we can access the entire database on our own. Back when the people went into Consciousness space (or out of body), and could access the FUTURE probability thread to "see" what they did not have words yet to describe, they made record of what they saw in the best way they could by drawing on cave walls, and such. It isn't random retrieval, but idea that we are rats in a maze isn't it either. There are little truths in many ideas. It is Consciousness deriving this universe, and anything else, and that is big Truth as it is a model that works, and explains Reality well. It is predictive in that it works to explain Reality very well. Interpretation of data, that is what it is all about here, it is all data.

We attach emotions to words which builds meanings which means everything is subjective with unique meaning of any thing special to each bit of Consciousness as experience builds on experience, etc. to create meaning.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

rumspringa,

Welcome to the discussion group.

What is any simulation for? I suppose there are many possible answers, but given the scope of the sort of simulation to which you are referring, one would be hasty to anthropomorphize the one running the simulation and come to a mundane human purpose. It is easy to assume a superhuman sort of scientist working in a lab, creating a complex computer simulation filled with conscious computer beings, running on a computer powerful enough to simulate the universe. However, this just pushes the problem back another level to a superhuman superhuman who created that simulation, and so on; an infinite matryoshka doll of simulations, or turtles all the way down. What we're interested in (and what Tom gets to in his book) is the supersystem, the metaphysical system at the root of it. A sort of reality-consists-of-all-and-only-that-which-is-real entity - a highly abstract, but useful concept.

I don't understand the implications of this, the logics or functioning it imples, but they are stimulating thoughts. Intriguing speculations.

rumspringa,

Curios as to what the tie is between rumspringa and Anubis? Or is that something to do with some rock(?) band as opposed to the cultural origins of rumspringa?

MojiDoji has pointed precisely to the difference between Tom Campbell's understandings and those of many such as Jacques Vallee who in some way pointed to or speculated about this being a Virtual Reality, a simulation. Tom has indeed explained the basis upon which the computer which generates the VR came into being and also the Mind/Consciousness behind the computer. Also the reason for there to be a need, the purpose, for the VRs of the two general types known.

Without this step outside of our 'local' concepts into the metaphysics of the whole Consciousness System as we know it, you have no basis for anything besides some form of deus ex machina to make the machine crank. One can in fact show that Tom's basic model of the metaphysics of the Consciousness System links to the "Pure" mathematics that is inherent to our reality as opposed to derived by mathematicians in the local VR system. It is all one intricate system interconnected at all levels.

Ted

Hi, Ted, I finally got Tom's book from Amazon last week. Started reading it. So far so good! I knew I was missing out on a whole chunk of stuff just listening to Youtube videos and reading reviews. Currently on p. 81, where Tom introduces NPMR. This is a rich book. Plenty of substance in this book.

This is not New Age fluff. It's not exactly like reading To Kill a Mocking Bird. It will be challenging for me to forge ahead. I had to struggle through Brian Whitworth's articles. But I know that the effort will be worthwhile.

About 20 years ago, I got my hands on a similar book ... well, not that similar but of the same genre: Frank Tipler's Physics of Immortality. I digested maybe 20% of that book. I hope to digest perhaps 80% of Tom's. Even though I have 2 masters degrees, my background is mostly in the liberal arts, so I'll need to dig into my reserves.