Physicist: The Entire Universe Might Be a Neural Network

Originally Posted by Busby

I've tried to point out a couple of times on SF just how odd it is that we, I mean each of us as well as all the rest of creation accept the fact of living almost as if there is a hidden part of us that knows what it's all about. In truth we should be shocked out of our shoes to realise that we are actually 'here'. Most children pop the question 'mummy, where do I come from?' at about the age of six or seven. The stork usually suffices as an answer.
The absolute staggering, shocking, remarkable, extraordinary, incredible, flabbergasting realisation that I/we (and presumably everything) is/are in a state of awareness should be shouted from the roof tops every morning.

We don't realise that this universe didn't exist until we were born!

There are 8 billion of us and countless elephants, bees, sheep, grasses, dandelions, mountains, seas and so on, all of which cannot be explained.
Many of us humans take life as granted, - 'it is so', an attitude that can be fully accepted - after all it doesn't seem as if we actually asked to be here.

I personally am not on this forum because of some biblical god or far eastern philosophy but because I have experienced happenings in my life which defy any explanation, lying outside the rules and regulations set by logic.
Naturally any attempt to give an idea of how this all came about catches my interest every time. I'll listen to anything from any of the 8 billion individual universes which are at the moment on this planet. (if there is a planet).

My suggestion that we could ask the rice planter standing up to his knees in the paddy fields in Vietnam for an explanation didn't get much response here in SF - but would have been as valid as anything else.

That part about experiencing things lying outside the rules and regulations set by logic is one I can relate to. When I was young I was convinced that science and logic could deliver a rational explanation for any question one might think to ask. My regret came when it occurred to me I would not live long enough even to accumulate the ones it had already answered. Perhaps it can answer anything, perhaps it cannot. But most assuredly, if it can, I expect the vast majority of those rational explanations are beyond the capacity of my mind to comprehend, regardless of how long I live. No matter how far a dog tilts it head to one side or the other, there are things it cannot understand.

At one time that thought bothered me a great deal, now I seem to find satisfaction in it. Any reality constructed in a way in which my limited intellect could understand and explain everything, would be a disappointing one indeed. A fact is a solid, bounded, and reassuring thing, but mysteries have no boundaries that we know of, and I expect there is always a trade off to be had between comfort and adventure.

I completely agree with your point about asking the rice planter for his thoughts, or the brick layer, or the line worker. Formal education can have a way of closing minds to some things as it opens them to others. Sometimes the trade is not an advantageous one for the student. When I read that line I immediately thought about a part in Hess's Siddhartha. Toward the end when Siddhartha looks back at the silly people and no longer finds them so silly, no longer sees himself as so far above them. When Siddhartha was young and petulant, he found life to taste rather bitter and putrid and wanted to spit it out. As he ages and nears the end of his life, he comes to understand that taste is not in the food, nor on the tongue, but rather in the mind and even in the spirit. The boy may hold his nose at a slice of limburger cheese, while the old man appreciates the mild flavor and creamy texture. Life, once one learns to stop evaluating its taste against how one thinks it should taste, can become a food that one can acquire a taste and appreciation for, one that nourishes the soul and helps it to grow.

"Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers." -- Aldo Leopold

.

[guthrio]

Originally Posted by Busby

I've tried to point out a couple of times on SF just how odd it is that we, I mean each of us as well as all the rest of creation accept the fact of living almost as if there is a hidden part of us that knows what it's all about. In truth we should be shocked out of our shoes to realise that we are actually 'here'. Most children pop the question 'mummy, where do I come from?' at about the age of six or seven. The stork usually suffices as an answer.
The absolute staggering, shocking, remarkable, extraordinary, incredible, flabbergasting realisation that I/we (and presumably everything) is/are in a state of awareness should be shouted from the roof tops every morning.

We don't realise that this universe didn't exist until we were born!

There are 8 billion of us and countless elephants, bees, sheep, grasses, dandelions, mountains, seas and so on, all of which cannot be explained.
Many of us humans take life as granted, - 'it is so', an attitude that can be fully accepted - after all it doesn't seem as if we actually asked to be here.

I personally am not on this forum because of some biblical god or far eastern philosophy but because I have experienced happenings in my life which defy any explanation, lying outside the rules and regulations set by logic.
Naturally any attempt to give an idea of how this all came about catches my interest every time. I'll listen to anything from any of the 8 billion individual universes which are at the moment on this planet. (if there is a planet).

My suggestion that we could ask the rice planter standing up to his knees in the paddy fields in Vietnam for an explanation didn't get much response here in SF - but would have been as valid as anything else.

Hi Busby,

Here's something that may catch your interest, and Ketzer's too

...your rice planter's reply, "stooped" by the knowledge gained from planting generations of paddies, would conclusively state "from a seed".

Whereas, the physicist, "steeped" in the knowledge gleaned from experiments conducted by generations of peers "still" wondering "how all this came about" ...would conditionally reply, Yes, from a seed...."but which contains infinite potential within it".

When I read this part of your post above, "Most children pop the question 'mummy, where do I come from?' at about the age of six or seven. The stork usually suffices as an answer. The absolute staggering, shocking, remarkable, extraordinary, incredible, flabbergasting realisation that I/we (and presumably everything) is/are in a state of awareness should be shouted from the roof tops every morning."

...I just had to climb upon the metaphorical rooftop, myself, to provide the answer referenced below. You may find it worth shouting about, too!

Enjoy!

https://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/s...5&postcount=61 Mom, Dad, How Did I Get Here?

[Busby]

Originally Posted by guthrio

Hi Busby,

Here's something that may catch your interest, and Ketzer's too

...your rice planter's reply, "stooped" by the knowledge gained from planting generations of paddies, would conclusively state "from a seed".

Whereas, the physicist, "steeped" in the knowledge gleaned from experiments conducted by generations of peers "still" wondering "how all this came about" ...would conditionally reply, Yes, from a seed...."but which contains infinite potential within it".

When I read this part of your post above, "Most children pop the question 'mummy, where do I come from?' at about the age of six or seven. The stork usually suffices as an answer. The absolute staggering, shocking, remarkable, extraordinary, incredible, flabbergasting realisation that I/we (and presumably everything) is/are in a state of awareness should be shouted from the roof tops every morning."

...I just had to climb upon the metaphorical rooftop, myself, to provide the answer referenced below. You may find it worth shouting about, too!

Enjoy!

https://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/s...5&postcount=61 Mom, Dad, How Did I Get Here?

Guthrio, thanks.

Absolutely fascinating the wealth of information that just floats around out of our reach. Too much really for our present state.

Your 'Law of attraction' I'll read through asap.

My starting point that we aware beings, whatever we may be, and the ease with which we accept life as if we do actually know what it's all about is foremost in my mind at the moment. The seemingly 'take it for granted' attitude that we see when watching an elephant or a deer being born is quite remarkable. No different to a human except that we are apparently more fragile - not so physical - and so we take extra care.
The thought that denseness of physicality reflects a given stage of development appeals to me.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...begins-when-s/
This spark could give a clue. It came into my mind because you mentioned 'spark' somewhere.

I'm pretty sure that Jung's 'collective unconscious' or whatever title we may give it, is at the least tending toward an explanation. This collected mass of information is the ocean out of which we sometimes peep above the surface.
At source we are fully informed - that's why we accept life so easily and sometimes treat it so cheaply.

Originally Posted by guthrio

All,

That is the perennial question, isn't it?

Soooooo, how many versions of the answer are there, hmmmm?

Well, you could say that there are "laws of attraction"....and there are Laws of Attraction, right?

I found the following to provide an all-encompassing answer that covers everything from "birds and bees to storks and seeds".

As excerpted from John McDonald's excellent book "The Message of a Master" (see 1st sentence in Chapter 8 of the reference below):

How did you get here? You grew from a minute cell smaller than the point of a pin. Just think! A cell or seed the size of a pin point contained within itself in essence and in entirety, the wonderful being that you are today.Surely, that cell could not possibly contain the material forms, no matter how infinitesimal they might be, of body, head, hair, arms, legs, hands, feet and all the wonderful organs of the body. "

Now, having passed the first perennial gauntlet, if you want to preclude having no answer to the next OBVIOUS question, "Soooooo, Mom, Dad, how did I get from there to here?" .....use this one (from the very next paragraph in Chapter 8)

"Well, then, how did you arrive at your full stature as you now appear? There is but one logical answer – that cell contained a spark of Mind, the one and only power supreme in man. That spark of mind, true to the law of its own being, held a fixed image or picture of you and you unfolded, grew and eventually out-pictured or become objectified in obedience to that law"

VOILA!

"Soooooo, Mom, Dad, what is a "spark of mind" and how does that apply to me??" Didn't see that one coming?

At this point, you may choose to search for a dictionary to explain what a "metaphor" is, or hurriedly send Junior or Princess out to play, while you and your spouse take turns wiping each other's fevered brow!

....or you can begin to show and tell them, from examples gleaned of your own successful, well-practiced experience, how that is all about the very last sentence in the very last page (page 49) of everything you've learned from actualizing the messages underlying this excellent book, referenced below. "By all means, practice it."

Now! When Junior or Princess, (having applied those lessons on the "playground" of Life for the last 10 or so years), asks "Sooooooo, Mom, Dad, need some help ?".....you can confidently tell them:

...."Baby"! You've got this!.....because you've practiced its mastery often enough, to know that you will always receive the good things you've wanted in Life, just like we taught you. Pass it on to those in need !!"

Hope you didn't think I was talking about something else here, besides the Laws of Attraction in the Garden of You, huh?....

Reference: https://www.law-of-attraction-haven....f-a-master.pdf

Hello Gutherio

Thanks for the post and the one above as well.

As I read it through some perspective came to mind. That tiny cell, smaller than the head of a pin, carried in it the weight of the world, past and present, and will shape its future. Within its nucleus, was a sampling of a genetic pool of information that for millions of years has been, and continues to be, shaped by the bathymetry of its environment, both that environment we call nature, and the one we humans create, expect to nurture us, and call society. At that stage of conception, whatever else I may conceptually have been, I was already the result of a matrix of cause and effect that extends as far back as the big bang, and perhaps beyond.

Of course it did not stop there. Mom was a smoker, and so I smoked the first 9 months of my life. Just one example of the continuous sculpting and shaping that nurture does with the lump of nature that it starts off with. Once I was born, the shaping and sculpting of a person I would come to know as me, and eventually be expected to take responsibility for, kicked into high gear. When one thinks about it, so much of the me I seem to be, was created by a nature and nurture that I did not have control over, that it almost seems unfair to expect to dump responsibility for it onto me just because I have passed puberty. But then I suppose someone has to take responsibility for it eventually, and to be fair, like any youth, I was in a hurry to get the title in my pocket and my hands on the steering wheel. I scarcely thought about the costs of gas, maintenance, and insurance, nor about all the rules, responsibility, and potential consequences that came with owning and driving it.

When I think about all of this from that perspective, this me, and how it came to be, seems as much the result of a vast network of cause and effect, than it is of my own handiwork. I see myself as a wave, and tend to forget that there is an entire ocean that lies beneath me and pushes me along. I am something of everyone and everything that has come and happened before me, and will be something of everyone and thing that comes after. I am a result of, a part of, and a contributor to, that vast network in space and time, one that I only briefly catch a limited glimpse of in this one lifetime.

.

[guthrio]

Originally Posted by Busby

Guthrio, thanks.

Absolutely fascinating the wealth of information that just floats around out of our reach. Too much really for our present state.

Your 'Law of attraction' I'll read through asap.

My starting point that we aware beings, whatever we may be, and the ease with which we accept life as if we do actually know what it's all about is foremost in my mind at the moment. The seemingly 'take it for granted' attitude that we see when watching an elephant or a deer being born is quite remarkable. No different to a human except that we are apparently more fragile - not so physical - and so we take extra care.
The thought that denseness of physicality reflects a given stage of development appeals to me.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...begins-when-s/
This spark could give a clue. It came into my mind because you mentioned 'spark' somewhere.

I'm pretty sure that Jung's 'collective unconscious' or whatever title we may give it, is at the least tending toward an explanation. This collected mass of information is the ocean out of which we sometimes peep above the surface.
At source we are fully informed - that's why we accept life so easily and sometimes treat it so cheaply.

Busby,

Thanks for your interest in the book, which I hope "sparks" further conversations. I especially enjoyed the author's treatment of the role of resistance, considering your words above "The thought that denseness of physicality reflects a given stage of development appeals to me."

Me too! As a matter of fact, I've come to consider our soul-journ on this plane as the spiritual equivalent of "weight-training"!

The author puts it this way:

"Will you encounter resistance? Oh, yes. Your activity creates it. Why? Because action requires reaction to support it. Resistance is the negative pole of action or activity, the positive pole as you have already heard, and you need both. If there were no resistance, action would be nonexistent. It is resistance that keeps the airplane soaring. Without resistance, it could not fly. Neither could the birds; or the fish swim; or you walk. As the power of the engine increases, the greater the momentum of the airplane and the greater the resistance necessary to support it. The greater the momentum, the greater the altitude or height possible to attain." (page 43/46)

Learning how to let our Spirits do the heavy lifting of living vs. total reliance on our physicality (i.e. our bodies) to overcome problems, seems to be the very thing our societies have omitted from the "curriculum", in favor of "no pain, no gain" schools of hard knocks.

I look forward to the challenge of learning...even after these ***years!

...and to learning from / with my class-mates!

[guthrio]

Please disregard this as a duplicate post

[guthrio]

Originally Posted by ketzer

Hello Gutherio

Thanks for the post and the one above as well.

As I read it through some perspective came to mind. That tiny cell, smaller than the head of a pin, carried in it the weight of the world, past and present, and will shape its future. Within its nucleus, was a sampling of a genetic pool of information that for millions of years has been, and continues to be, shaped by the bathymetry of its environment, both that environment we call nature, and the one we humans create, expect to nurture us, and call society. At that stage of conception, whatever else I may conceptually have been, I was already the result of a matrix of cause and effect that extends as far back as the big bang, and perhaps beyond.

Of course it did not stop there. Mom was a smoker, and so I smoked the first 9 months of my life. Just one example of the continuous sculpting and shaping that nurture does with the lump of nature that it starts off with. Once I was born, the shaping and sculpting of a person I would come to know as me, and eventually be expected to take responsibility for, kicked into high gear. When one thinks about it, so much of the me I seem to be, was created by a nature and nurture that I did not have control over, that it almost seems unfair to expect to dump responsibility for it onto me just because I have passed puberty. But then I suppose someone has to take responsibility for it eventually, and to be fair, like any youth, I was in a hurry to get the title in my pocket and my hands on the steering wheel. I scarcely thought about the costs of gas, maintenance, and insurance, nor about all the rules, responsibility, and potential consequences that came with owning and driving it.

When I think about all of this from that perspective, this me, and how it came to be, seems as much the result of a vast network of cause and effect, than it is of my own handiwork. I see myself as a wave, and tend to forget that there is an entire ocean that lies beneath me and pushes me along. I am something of everyone and everything that has come and happened before me, and will be something of everyone and thing that comes after. I am a result of, a part of, and a contributor to, that vast network in space and time, one that I only briefly catch a limited glimpse of in this one lifetime.

.

Ketzer,

My pleasure. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I still do.

It's not every day one is struck by the intimacy of continuity, simultaneously beginning AND extending even beyond one's seeming individuality as an integral, inseparable "part"-icipant in ALL of it.

Thank you for this thread's reminder in reflection, implicit in the promise of its premise.

...conversing with Eternity.

[guthrio]

Ketzer,

.... Almost forgot!

Used to have a girlfriend named Qualia, we spent a lot of time in the bathymetric tub gleefully spilling a lot of water on the ocean floor, playing Scrub-A-Dub dub with a toy that looked very much like the frog Busby's always talking about 😄

That is until we met some guy named Rumi, who taught us how to conserve water on a cosmic scale:

"You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop." Rumi

.... and he continues on from there.....https://wisdomquotes.com/rumi-quotes/

Haven't had a dry eye since 😥

Originally Posted by guthrio

"You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop." Rumi

Can I not be both?

[guthrio]

..... I think you may enjoy hearing the answer to your question from one of the infinite, existing versions of you whose Mom did not smoke before you were born, or a version of you who did not give a hoot about taking responsibility for yourself, asking YOU what you meant in the last paragraph above that begins with "when I think about all of this from that perspective...this me"...

..... Especially if his life's experiences may conceivably NOT have come to such a conclusion?

Answer: Any of all possibilities are available for choosing, at once, (but only once). Don't believe me?

Ask Heraclitus (or any particle in any double slit scenario). https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/heraclitus_107157