The Machine of Consciousness

The figure adapts Steve Lehar’s cartoon with a homuncular recursion and other factors that describe the circular recursion of thought and cognition. The homunculus is the little person inside of our minds with whom it feels like we are always speaking. The homunculus is also a part of the physical brain that maps the topology of motor function.

The homuncular recursion is often called absurd because it does in principle go to infinity, since each homunculus has its own homunculus inside that head and so on. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with a homuncular recursion or any recursion as long as it converges in a reasonable number of recursions. When a homuncular recursion converges, it results in a resonance wave of neural action called a thought. Thoughts make sense out of the outer world and are the resonances of inner relational waves shown plotted in time for a deep meditative delta wave. Most thought, of course, is much more complex than the singular thought of a deep meditation or sleeping delta resonance.

There are many math series and computer do-loops that show convergence even though they could also go to infinity in principle and such series make sense as long as they converge to a useful result with a useful precision within a useful time. Recursions are part of the solution of consciousness and fundamentally, neural recursion is that reason that we often end up with circular definitions in our discourse and thought.

There are many important details about consciousness that this figure sketches in, like the role of Cartesian versus relational thought and the important role of memory for consciousness and perception. Memory is our lifetime of objects related to the experience of the moment. However, this assumes that cognition works somehow and jumps right into feeling and consciousness. This figure also does not include the very important roles of emotion and the primitive mind in feeling and choice of action.

Our brains exchange matter with the objects in the world that we perceive and while the typical matter that we exchange is made up of photons of light (i.e. visual images), sensation can also be sound, taste, touch, or smell as well. Don't forget that our body shines on the same object whose light then shines on us as well. The EEG spectra (see also) of the brain show the amplitudes of neural recursion waves associated with thought according to the various states of the mind. The EEG amplitudes are the relational waves of recursions of electrical activity among neurons present in our brains.

These EEG spectra include the thought spectrum from a single frequency resonance that represents deep meditation as well as sleeping delta waves. From the relational neural waves that are connected to objects, our Cartesian machine resonates with the possibility of an object but that projection only exists in our mind as a possibility of our particle-like Cartesian reality. The mathematics of this information extraction are straightforward as we go from neural pulse time relational amplitudes to matter (or frequency) spectra of thoughts. 

In principle, each resonance of an EEG spectrum represents the recursion of a single thought, but our conscious mind is able to keep the resonances of each thought separate from each other. In order to decode the resonances of a single thought needs the phase information as well as the amplitudes. The often neglected phase information of EEG resonances, which is the relative firing of the neural impulses, permits the deconvolution of EEG’s into distinct thoughts out of the power spectrum, i.e., make sense out of the superposition of all of the thoughts of each day. A desirable feeling or thought could be either a peak or a valley in an EEG spectrum and any reasonable experience would be a superposition of a large number of thoughts. 

The deep meditation EEG shows that the single thought peak at 0.70 (1.4 Hz) represents a time wave with a recursion of about 0.70 s, which is close to the period of a heartbeat. Human reaction times are about 0.1 s or so and the brain is typically flooded with neural waves as the beta wave plot shows with recursive waves as fast as ~0.002 s or 500 Hz.

There does appear to be a recursion in the deep meditation spectrum at ~1.4 Hz, although that recursion is only one of many. Synchronized with the heartbeat, though, this peak may be the singular state of awareness that deep meditation feels like and this deep thought may also be the fundamental action of our brain’s clock, which is the heartbeat. 

Assuming a neural action potential energy is 1.6e-30 kg (120 mV at 200 Mohms for 2 ms), the minimum energy needed for recursion would be two neural actions at a matter equivalent energy of 3.2e-30 kg. That would result in an action of 2.3e-30 kg s at 1.4 Hz and this neural action is the exchange matter (or binding energy) for a single neural quantum of thought just as Planck's constant gives the energy from a single photon of light.

This model of the mind as neural resonances would then be very much like that of a laser with neural action waves in place of light waves. Without coherence, the modes of a laser cavity are random and chaotic, and so the resonances of thought only make sense with coherence. Thus the missing piece for being able to deconvolve our mind's relational waves may be a measure of the phase coherence among the recurring thoughts as neural waves that are the EEG. The phase of the delta wave is the key to unlocking the time wave phase coherence of the human mind.

For completion, this last figure shows the EEG waves of various states including our final eternal thought...

Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain

Lulu Xie1,*, Hongyi Kang1,*, Qiwu Xu1, Michael J. Chen1, Yonghong Liao1, Meenakshisundaram Thiyagarajan1, John O’Donnell1, Daniel J. Christensen1, Charles Nicholson2, Jeffrey J. Iliff1, Takahiro Takano1, Rashid Deane1, Maiken Nedergaard1

Science 18 October 2013:

Vol. 342 no. 6156 pp. 373-377

DOI: 10.1126/science.1241224

Comment: 

This paper shows the different states of the mouse mind, awake, asleep, and anesthesized. Especially nice were the delta and alpha wave measurements that correlated the brain cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) infusion that occurs during sleep. Neural proteins like Abeta build up while awake and dissipate during sleep. Brain cells expand while awake and shrink during sleep, thereby drawing CSF in during sleep and pushing CSF out upon awakening.

What Is Free Choice?

It would seem like the theories of physics and the structure of the universe would have little to do with the theories of the mind and free choice. Even with a valid quantum theory of gravity to complement our quantum theory of charge, it is not clear how that would have anything to do with how our minds work.

Usually, when it comes to free choice, science throws up its hands. These are hard questions that have no answers, it would seem, and of course, philosophy and religion are both perpetual discourses about hard questions that have no answers. Philosophy and religion both feel compelled to ask the questions nevertheless and try to answer them as well, which generates more questions, and so on. Just because matter time unites charge and gravity forces, it would not seem likely that that unification had much of anything to do with free choice.

One theory reasons that free choice is simply what happens when we are awake...okay. Another theory of free choice ties it to the microtubules of the brain, where some kind of coupling with space occurs...okay. But in any event, there is no easy way to define free choice.

Similarly, there is no easy way to define time and space and the three propositions of free choice, time, and space all seem to bedevil our imaginations. Nevertheless, free choice does seem very timelike and it would seem that free choice is more like time and space than it is like either matter or action.

Unfortunately, philosophical discourses often begin without a description of the axioms that anchor the universe. With ill-stated assumptions that are usually implicit as some combination of matter and time and space and energy and so on, such discourses become confused. When the people involved have different beliefs and axioms that anchor their realities, they really can only discuss their different beliefs and their consistency, not any other discourse.

All objects are made of matter, but since energy is also matter by E = mc², objects are then both matter as well as energy. Assuming that the universe is made up of only matter and time, that then means that there is additional matter beyond that of the objects we sense. Space is usually an object as well, an empty object that we do not sense, and so objects really are matter, energy, and space. Before you know it, there are both sensed objects and objects that consist of nothing but the empty voids between sensed objects. Space is an object that has dimension, but space has nothing in it…except many quantum particles jumping into and out of existence. Now there are different kinds of matter showing up here, there, and everywhere.

Current science bases the universe on a set of axioms that are notably incomplete and full of gaps in understanding.The basic difficulty that we have in describing free choice has more to do with the patchwork of axioms in science than in any intrinsic complexity of the mind. A simpler, self-consistent description of reality seems to show a simpler, self-consistent description of free choice as well.

Philosophers get into trouble very quickly by launching into discourses about the nature of the universe before carefully defining their axioms and beliefs for a universe. This is especially a problem since science does not yet provide a completely consistent set of axioms and beliefs in the first place. What is a property and what is a material? What is time and what is the action principle? Can matter exist as both amplitude with a phase and intensity devoid of phase? Does time have one or two dimensions? The projection of Cartesian space in our minds, for example, is a powerful and innate means for predicting action, but that projection of Cartesian space can blind us to the underlying simpler reality of matter time.

The properties of time and action are axioms and not objects of matter in our universe and so with matter time, our axioms end up defining each other as they should. Matter exists as objects by the differential of action with time and an action of the universe divided by a time moment is what results in matter. Although we think of matter as motionless and without action, all matter is in motion.

Time is the trickiest axiom to think about since our minds are very time-like and that makes free choice just as tricky. Using our time-like thought to think about time is in some sense circular. As we think of time in the present moment, that moment includes the action of our thought about the present moment and we are somehow confused between time as the memory of action and time as the action of thought. As we think of time as a memory of action, we use the action of thought to imagine time as the actions of memory.

But memories and thought are both part of the matter of our brain and maybe we are confused between time as the matter of our memory and time as the matter of our thought. The fact that we obviously think as time passes fundamentally confuses us about thinking of time. Thought seems like time and time seems like thought, so the only way out of this conundrum is to use time's definition to also define free choice.

Time is the differential of action with matter and our free choice is similarly the differential of the action of thought with the matter of memory. The very way that we think is time-like, but our minds can either be experiencing a present action, remembering a precursor, or imagining an outcome.

When we experience an immediate action with sensation-feeling-action, free choice is the action of thought with the matter of memory. When we remember or imagine action, we derive action from the matter of our brain and free choice becomes the action of memory or imagination with the matter of thought. Time is an accumulation of matter moments as action divided by a matter moment where a moment of matter is like a clock tick or a neural moment. Action is the integration of matter objects in time and action is the basic result and cause of force of the universe.

So you can see now why a theory of the universe will also therefore be a theory of the mind. Our free choice has all of the attributes of our reality and that free choice is therefore a mechanism of our brain just like language is a mechanism of our brain. Although free choice is innate to the mind, just like we learn language, we must also learn our innate free choice by observing and imitating others.

Free choice as learned behavior is analogous to language in the sense that even though the ability of language is innate to our mind and physiology, we still must learn a particular language by observing and imitating others in order to communicate. By the age three or four we acquire or learn a simple language and by the age of five or six, we further acquire or learn a simple free choice as well. Just like language is how we use words to share stories, free choice is how we act out those stories with other people.

Just like language allows us to communicate with each other, free choice allows us to act with others and communicate and bond with each other and to have feelings of compassion for and selfishness of each other. In effect, free choice is an evolutionary mechanism of our minds where people freely choose to bond with other people and what we call rational thought is how we learn that we came from some origin, have a purpose beyond that of the primitive mind, and some kind of a destiny. With free choice, we share a Cartesian reality of an outer life and a relational reality or an inner life and bond with other people, animals, and objects in a cooperative civilization that enhances our survival.

Our life and our free choices are both prerequisites for and therefore depend on the primal beliefs that anchor that free choice. There are primal beliefs that anchor free choice just like there are languages that anchor communication, and so we all do need some kind of primal beliefs to anchor our free choice. After all, we can only be alive and conscious if we both think and accumulate memories of experiences, which are the neural recursions of sensation, feeling, and action. Free choice depends on both the action of thought and the static memory of experience and this combination of primal beliefs means that free choice is time-like.

The theories of the mind are many and varied, but cognitive development occurs in certain key stages. By the age of about two, the primary anchors of Cartesian belief are that objects are permanent matter, that time is a sequence of actions, that space is a projection of time, and that prediction of action is the product of objects and time. These primary Cartesian anchors of matter, time, and action then permit learning relational anchors by age of about six that objects all have an origin, a destiny, and a purpose. Once a child learns the Cartesian and relational anchors of belief, the memory of action as experience begins a nascent free choice.

Thus the basic axioms of matter time show up as they should as the basic Cartesian and relational beliefs that anchor free choice.

Space as an Empty Dark Lonely Nothing

Space is a very convenient way to keep track of objects and time, but our discovery of the meaning of the nothing of empty space reveals a perpetual journey to understanding everything. We must be able to believe in nothing as the something that the background universe is before we can ever hope to discover the way the world works, and it is that discovery that gives us purpose and gives our life meaning.

There is a long history of conundrums that the concept of space generates and magicians very skillfully use the illusions of space to effectively fool us about objects. Infinitely divisible and filled with nothing, the characteristics of space are a recipe for illusion and paradoxes even though empty space is what we discover most of the universe to be. We never seem to doubt the existence of the singular nothing that is an empty void space, which is an absence of sensation, even though we might doubt the existence of an object that we actually do sense. Space, after all, is everywhere the same nothing and has an intuitive and innate feeling of nothing about it in spite of our natural anxiety about the void of empty space.

We do not really experience continuous space and motion in space, we experience changes in discrete objects in discrete time. Because we do not really directly experience space, there is no end to space and motion much like there is no end to or stopping time. We are naturally very anxious about the void of empty space since with nothing to eat or drink and with no shelter or clothing, we would not survive very long. While we do not sense the nothing of empty space and only sense discrete objects and their discrete time delays, we presume that continuous space is an empty void of infinitely divisible nothing that separates objects from each other.

Likewise there are many empty moments of continuous time that we call inaction between the occasional actions of our lives, but we keep the action of continuous time connected between moments that we sense of objects. That is, we do not imagine a timeless eternity of inaction between the actions of our lives.

We often define things by stating what they are like, and continuous space is very much like continuous time. In other words, time and space are in some sense just different representations of the same metric of action. We can only define an axiom in terms of other axioms and so if both space and time are like each other, space and time are just different versions of the same axiom of time delay.

Discrete matter and time delay predict object action in time and the prediction of a Cartesian location or motion or force field results in continuous space and motion emerging from discrete matter, time, and action. In order to understand reality, we must first understand the axioms that define that reality and although the dark void of empty space is a very intuitive and innate concept, we only know if it is an axiom by describing what space is like. It would appear that instead of space being uniquely axiomatic, space and motion both emerge from the actions of objects in time. Space and motion allow us to keep track of separate Cartesian objects with our minds. While space and motion helps us keep track of objects and predict action, space does not exist independent of or orthogonal to discrete time delay.

There is the obvious something that separates objects from each other and therefore objects seem to need the continuum of empty space to move around just like objects need continuous time to prevent everything from happening at once. Given the axiom of action, which is the product of matter and time, where once again action as an axiom is defined by the product of two other axioms, time and matter. We can also define action as the product of matter and displacement, which further suggests that time and space are simply complementary metrics for action.

Since they are complementary, we define space just like we define time; with an action like a footstep or a meter and an accumulation of those moments as action. Although we think of distance in space as a length, the metric of that length is also a part of distance. A separation, then, has both an integration of matter as action and the moment of that action, such as a footstep or a meter.

The discrete time delays that we sense from objects imply that there is a continuous time space and since we move both forward and backward in space, we should also move forward and backward in time. In fact, we only predict objects into a future space based on our memory of them in the space of our past. We have a fading memory or knowledge of the past locations and motions of objects that permits us to predict their futures and so memory is an accumulation of past actions as experience. While we sense past locations and motions for objects, those sensations are simply a memory while the projections of objects' locations and motions in the future are only about the possibilities for our future and not necessarily about which future will occur.

Continuous space and time emerge from action as discrete time delays of objects and it is possible to project continuous time from motion in space and vice versa. The way that objects move is by changing their inertial mass over time and that change in inertial mass tells us about their motion and the way the the universe matter changes around an object tells us about an objects relations with other objects. The electromagnetic or gravitational fields that affect an object are equivalent to changes in decay or shrinkage of the universe and it is the shrinking universe that is the source of all force and motion.

Why Does Grand Unification Seem So Simple?

A rather simple set of three axioms; discrete matter, time delay, and action, close the universe with a shrinking decoherence of matter where gravity and charge are simply scaled versions of each other as the figure below shows. Instead of a higher dimensional string theory or a supersymmetry or a quantum loop embedded into a continuous space and time, the three axioms of discrete matter, time delay, and action augment the more limited notions of continuous space and time. Discrete matter and time delay incorporate a matter-scaled Schrödinger’s equation for action and since discrete matter and time are based on quantum mechanics, a quantum gravity results. Since action in matter time is based on mass-energy equivalence, matter time is also consistent with all of the principles of Lorentz invariance as well.

Along with the three axioms, there are just two fundamental constants in matter time: the aether particle mass, m_ae, and the matter-scaled Planck constant, h_ae= h/c², along with Schrödinger’s equation. The only fundamental particle in matter time is the aether particle, a boson that makes up all matter and all force and aether decoherence time, determines is what determines both gravity and charge forces. Gravity is nicely quantized in aethertime and the fundamental exchange particle of gravity is the aether particle while the fundamental exchange particle of charge is the aether pair, which is a photon. Photons, in effect, are a bound state of aether excitation and photons therefore aether carries both charge and gravity forces. Single photons  as aether pairs carry charge polarization and so it is complementary photon pairs that are the aether of gravity.

Aether decoherence is the intrinsic shrinkage of space with the time period of h_ae/m_ae and decoherence couples the radiative decay of stars to each other as matter waves. There is an extra quantum exchange force of gravitational matter waves that couples star motions to a spatial decoherence that stabilizes galaxies, in effect representing the force now called dark matter. Gravitational matter waves are a kind of exchange force that slow galaxy inner stars and speed up galaxy outer stars more than simple gravity action predicts by relativity. Stars in effect surf on galaxy matter waves and in principle, it should be possible for future spacecraft to also surf galaxy matter waves. It is possible to derive angular momentum from galaxy rotation instead of just impulse and that would allow prolonged periods of either acceleration or deceleration within a galaxy.

A fundamental property of matter time is that the universe shrinks with decoherence and does not expand as in the mainstream science of space time. Galaxies in the early aethertime universe are red shifted not because they are moving away from us due to expansion of the universe, but rather galaxies are red shifted because their spectra come from an early universe where values for the “constants” c, h, and α were all smaller in a concerted manner. In fact, the motion of decoherence of the universe blue-shifts the early galaxy spectra and it is the combination of red-shifted galaxies from the early universe along with their blue-shifts due to decoherence that we actually observe as a Hubble constant.

It is not clear why no one has yet discovered this rather simple unification scheme, but there are a number of approaches that are similar. Dirac’s large number hypothesis, for example, and more recently, Christof Wetterich of Heidelberg University has shown how a shrinking universe with uniformly varying physical constants is still consistent with the Hubble red shift. Matter time is just such a shrinking universe.

Both the velocity of light, c, and the fine structure constant, α, and Planck’s constant h all vary together in the early universe and that concerted variation confuses science. Not only was charge force much weaker in the early universe, but gravity force was also much weaker, although ironically, matter was heavier in the early universe in exactly the proportion that gravity was lower in some cases. Once again, even though gravity is weaker in the early universe, the apparent structures of distant galaxies does not change since hydrogen and other atoms are proportionately heavier in the early universe.

This apparent conspiracy of the concerted variation of space-time constants is simply a straightforward consequence of the simple axioms of that describe the decoherence of aethertime. Some local constants vary on a cosmic scale and their variation is very, very small, 0.255 ppb/yr. Although the current precision of time measurement is much greater than this, there is no correspondingly precise measure of mass. In fact, the IPK, the international standard for the kilogram, has decayed over the last 110 yrs by 0.53+/- 0.11 /yr, in agreement with to 0.52 ppb/yr that predicted by matter time within that measurement uncertainty as the figure shows. Mass appears to decrease at twice its true decay of 0.255 ppb/yr because of the assumption of constant atomic time. In matter time, atomic time increases its tick rate exactly complementary to the decay of matter.

The rotation of the earth defines the solar day and measuremnents over that last 60 years or so show a great deal of variability in the solar day. As the figure below shows, the measure of each day changes over a year by a millisecond or so and by several milliseconds over the last 60 years. Earth's rotation is slowing and the two reports show that rate along with the universal decoherence rate of 0.26 ppb/yr. Once again the assumption of constant atomic time leads to the measurement of an apparent slowing of earth's day but it is actually due to the increasing tick rate of the atomic clock.

Both charge and gravity forces have a rather simple and intuitive common explanation in aethertime. The fundamental decoherence of the universe onto itself is the origin of both gravity and charge forces. Charge force acts on the dimension of the hydrogen atom radius while gravity force acts on the dimension of the folded radius of the universe, some ten to the thirty-ninth power different in strength. In effect, the cross section of gravity force is charge force that has folded back onto itself by the folding of the universe back on itself.

Matter time actually unifies more than gravity and charge force since the fundamental action, the decoherence of the universe, is what drives all forces and all actions. Matter time incorporates the same quantum principles of action into both gravity and charge force and so the Klein-Gordon quantum equation that relates charge force to strong and weak nuclear forces still applies. Since time is a spatial dimension in matter time, the broad principles of time dilation in general relativity still apply, but spatial dilation has a much different interpretation.

Decoherence has far ranging consequences. In effect, an object like a star whose matter decays by hydrogen fusion and neutrino and photon radiation couples to the decoherence decay of space as well as to the decay of other stars. Such a coupling adds another term to the virial equation, which is a fundamental relationship between kinetic and potential energies and adds an extra force on the scale of a galaxy normally associated with dark matter. These extra forces result in matter waves that alter charge and gravity forces in concerted ways. Matter waves result in the exchange of angular momentum from the inner to the outer stars, slowing inner stars down while speeding outer stars up.

Why has mother nature waited so long to reveal these fundamental axioms of the universe?

The answer to this question is in the way we imagine space, the absolute nothing that is most of what we believe is all around us. The notion of a lonely dark empty Cartesian space has been and will continue to be very useful to help us predict the actions of objects. However, space has a much different interpretation in matter time compared with space time. We imagine space as an empty object that separates the objects that we see with our eyes and yet that space is an empty three-dimensional Cartesian void.

The absolute nothing that we imagine as empty space is the darkness between the stars and other objects as we gaze into the cosmos. We are often more certain of the absolute nothing of empty space that we cannot see or sense than we are of objects that we can see. There is no question that there is something that separates objects in our world, but is it really a lonely dark void of empty space?

In matter time, it is not space but rather it is time that separates objects, which is the way we think about time. Time is therefore a more fundamental dimension of separation than space and we can imagine that it is time that separates objects and not Cartesian space. Imagining time instead of space for separation gets at the fundamental axioms of the human consciousness as well as to the axioms of matter time.

When we define or name an object or concept, we describe what that thing is like, since that is how we relate objects to each other. Although there are many things that are like the axiom time, there is not any single thing that time is like. Rather, we can only define the time axiom in terms of other axioms, matter and action. Time is then both an action such as a clock tick along with the accumulation of those ticks as matter, the clock hands as a record of action.

Space seems to be a rather simple distance metric that shows object separation as three dimensions of forward and backward, up and down, left and right. All of these Cartesian distances, though, are each equivalent to a time as well, so Cartesian space is really just a projection of time.

Cartesian space is a time-like projection of the underlying reality of matter, time, and action. Our projection of Cartesian space on earth’s surface, for example, is a simplification of the complexity of the action of earth’s gravity, earth’s rotation about its axis, its motion around the sun, and through the galaxy and cosmos. We do know about the complexity of absolute motion in the cosmos and simplify our projection of space with a comoving inertial frame of reference that permits us to project our location and predict action.

Although we are very comfortable with both time and matter as a single dimensions since we measure time by the ticks of an atomic clock and measure the mass of an object. However, there is also a coherent phase amplitude for both time and matter and the amplitude of the aether particle oscillation in a matter spectrum is proportional to the displacement of that action. Although we imagine a volume of space that is filled with the matter of an object, that Cartesian volume is a representation of the time and matter spectra that make up an action.

Actions can be either collision or capture or a mixture of both collision and capture of two or more bodies. Two bodies exchange matter with each other, one gaining mass and the other losing mass, and alter their trajectories as a result. As the two bodies interact, their matter spectra become highly mixed and are no longer distinct. The matter spectrum for this action is a very good basis for predicting the future of that action, but the Cartesian time trajectories are likewise important.

Aether Action

It is really unfortunate over my forty year sojourn with science that mainstream science has not yet united charge and gravity forces. If you do not know what unification means, do not worry because there are explanations galore for the proposition of charge and gravity unification. Moreover, the limitations of mainstream science are obscured by the tensor algebra of relativity, the particle zoo of the Standard Model, and the mysteries of black holes, dark matter, and dark energy. This complexity renders mainstream science's explanations unintelligible to most people.

My life with science and technology has involved discovery of meaning and a deeper understanding of being. I enjoy very challenging problems in science and technology and have tended to work on problems that others cannot easily solve.

Thus it is quite a pleasure to discover the aethertime universe from which all physical laws and constants derive from a simple set of rational beliefs in discrete matter and action along with the Schrödinger equation. By augmenting continuous space and time with discrete matter and action, gravity and charge forces become scaled versions of each other and there are many other puzzles that discrete matter and action address. In fact, aethertime's particle-like Cartesian and wave-like relational representations for reality reveal the mystery of consciousness along with the vicissitudes and evolution of feeling and emotion. 

To explain the inexplicable, discrete matter and time delay provide a rational universe based on a set of three mathematical axioms, axioms that show the mystery of consciousness as well as the purpose and meaning of existence. Aethertime shows that there is a kind of spirituality within a rational universe with the gifts of matter, time, and action as a basis for imagining desirable futures.

The aethertime universe has three primal beliefs as origin, destiny, and purpose, a trimal that discovers meaning and purpose for  being. Every life and every universe has a beginning, has a destiny, and has a purpose in discovery and aethertime is a rationale for our universe that also has an origin, has a destiny, and has a purpose in discovery.

Humans and all life share and enjoy but a very thin slice of time and in fact all of human civilization is barely 5,000-10,000 human lifetimes, which is a bare one-hundred-thousandth of the lifetime of our universe. The primordial seed of all that we are is in discrete matter, time delay, and their action and we are therefore the progeny of the action of matter in time, even as we imagine our many possible futures. The universe, all life, and humanity would not be and we would not be without both the actions and the possibilities of matter that is our purpose in discovering how the universe works.

Religions believe in the supernatural, which seems like an otherwise harmless part of most other people’s lives. Religions have variously selected beliefs that are often associated with selective interpretations of ancient stories with mysterious supernatural origins that seem by definition irrational, but so what? People believe in a great many irrational things like extraterrestrial UFO's and conspiracies and yet people still survive and sometimes even thrive with many such irrational beliefs. Some people believe that they are beautiful and attractive in spite of evidence to the contrary in the mirror every morning.

After all is said and done, most of us can and still do agree to live by the golden rule and have compassion for others and limit our selfishness and adhere to the norms of civilization even without any supernatural stories to guide us. However, we also then agree to live by a code of justice enforcing those norms with punishment meted out to those who violate civilization's norms. 

Certain elements of religion do show a potentially destructive religio-politico zealotry that often seems to violate civil norms, but really this behavior is not unique for any particular religious ideology or even for religion at all. Religious and political zealotry by their very natures have a potential for persecution, for war, for inquisition, for shunning, for excommunication, and for other religious and political retributions. 

Religions believe in an afterlife that is free from all of the misery and selfishness of life, which can lead to self-destructive behavior. Leaving this life in favor of some imagined perfect afterlife can be the source of very destructive behavior, both for individuals as well as others whose lives those individuals touch.

We all have a purpose in discovering how the universe works, which can be as mundane as what is for lunch or as profound as the origin of all things. For me to imagine a desirable future, though, I need something much more rational and much better tied to a rational universe than any of these religious or political beliefs. After all, any of these beliefs, even Buddhism and capitalism, has its zealots.

So I now count myself as a believer of sorts, and I have come to believe in both science and in the metascience of discrete matter, matter exchange, and time delay. Aethertime is a simple set of rational beliefs that anchors existence. Although there will always be some mysteries and gaps in any science, thank goodness that science will always explain the explainable.

But then there will always be the inexplicable that science can never hope to explain, and as a result, we all also need the spiritual or supernatural stories for the inexplicable and the ineffable parts of existence. For the inexplicable, we all need primal beliefs; in an origin, in a destiny, and in a purpose--the trimal. That we need this trimal belief is self evident since there would be no conscious life without unfounded and unconditioned belief. We can choose to ignore the inexplicable, but that simply reduces our purpose to some default or innate belief. In fact, most people accept their primal beliefs from established supernatural agents, which have been providing such guidance from a diverse set of ancient stories for thousands of years. 

Discrete matter and time delay are a framework for existence which make help me understand all of the extant beliefs of civilization, religious, political, and philosophical. Through the prism of aethertime, the wisdom of ancient stories comes alive and aethertime provides an understanding of human reason.

The Past and Imagined Future

We look up into the stars and darkness of the night sky and see only the past, which are the sounds and images of many possible futures. In fact, all of what we ever hear or see is a memory of our past and in the sky we see a sun as it was eight minutes ago, a "nearby" star, Procyon, we see as it was 11 years ago, and we see the hundred billion other stars in our galaxy tens of thousands of years in their past. 

An earth-like planet that is 600 light years away may look very different today than it did 600 years ago. Remember descriptions of earth's history 600 years ago? Outside of our galaxy, there are a hundred billion other galaxies that are millions or even billions of years into the past billions of years of our universe. 

The sound of an approaching automobile can be many tenths of a second up to many seconds in the past and yet we call that our present. We remember the actions of our near and distant past and then we imagine a set of desirable futures. The futures that we imagine are based on our past knowledge and experience and with our feeling, we select a particular future that begins a journey that then becomes our reality. At each moment we choose from among a set of possible actions those that lead to a desirable journey and that selected future evolves into our reality. 

The events that we remember as our past help us to imagine possible futures, which is simply repeating the obvious. What perhaps is not so obvious is that this simple logic recursion, which evolves our feeling, is the basis of all action in the physical universe, the Schrödinger equation. While the past holds our origin, the future is our destiny and our purpose is in imagining and selecting a destiny that evolves a desirable life.

In imagining the collision of two objects, we predict a future based on a past collision for similar objects, but that future is never absolutely precise or certain. The uncertainty in our future is a fundamental part of our reality and that uncertainty describes the way our universe works. 

In other words, a replay of our universe with exactly the same initial conditions will lead to a similar but not necessarily an identical future. Likewise, given our selection of a possible future, a replay of exactly the same initial conditions will necessarily lead to a similar but not an identical choice. While our immediate future can often be predictable, our eventual destiny will never be exactly predictable. The very action of prediction, by its very nature, changes the course of the universe and it is this recursion that defines reality.

Origin, Destiny, and Purpose

There are three primal truths or beliefs that are bases of a trimal for our universe: origin, destiny, and purpose.

The origin is where the universe began, but in a sense, we can believe that the universe began when we awoke this morning. Science begins its universe with the big bang of spacetime, but where the big bang came from is an inexplicable belief that is beyond human understanding and our universe and ultimately our lives evolved from that unfounded belief.

Usually we are comfortable with the belief that we were born of parents and that our parents were likewise born of their parents and so on. With many such generations, it is very rare to have much more than a belief in such heritage, and so either science or religion can found many different origin beliefs.

Destiny is where the universe will end but also where we go when we die as well as at the end of the day, where we will sleep. The science of spacetime believes in a cold death for our universe as all matter expands into an accelerating oblivion. This destiny is beyond understanding and will occur many billions of years into the future. 

Religions have a variety of different destinies that usually involve immortal human souls, including destinies that recycle or reincarnate those human souls. Spacetime science seems to deny any kind of destiny for human souls after death. 

Most people are just happy to have a place to sleep at the end of the day and whatever the destiny of your belief determines the course of your life.

Purpose is a belief that all life shares in the discovery of how the universe works and in order to survive, we must discover how various parts of the universe work. Mainstream science seems to believe that all purpose and meaning is due to the action of physical laws and that there are no supernatural or transcendent influences for action. However, science also concedes that all action in the universe is still subject to a fundamental uncertainty in that for every moment there are still a large number of equally possible futures.

From these many possible futures, only one future becomes our past and every subsequent action still results in a similar superposition of many possible futures without any certain future. Only when a possible future becomes reality do all of the other possibilities decay away and our reality immediately affects all other possibilities within the same time moment from an action. 

Religions believe that there are supernatural or transcendental influences for action. In particular, religions argue that human choice is most certainly influenced by various supernatural agents. 

Science believes that human choice is simply the result of the processing of the neural impulses of our sensation. Science defines an uncertainty associated with each neural impulse and therefore with each human choice as well and so even for science, the future is never certain even with the perfect knowledge of its initial states.

Okay, religion continues, the predictions of science come from a number of possibilities but only one becomes reality as a past. Although it is impossible to predict exactly which of a set of futures our feeling will select, it is possible to predict which futures we are more likely. We select a particular future, though, based on neural recursion which involves our perception of objects and our feeling.

Religions predict the same number of possibilities as science, but religions argue that there are supernatural influences in our choice and in our feeling. Therefore it is not possible to predict exactly which future becomes reality, but it is possible to predict which futures are more likely. For both religion and science, then, sensation, contemplative thought, past experience, and action all form the bases of much of our feeling and for predicting a likely future. And it is with our feeling that we select futures and choose actions.

What is the difference in action between science and religion? Both science and religion ultimately depend on feeling and both acknowledge the underlying uncertainty and complexity of that feeling. 

A religion petitions for divine guidance, imagines futures based on past experience, selects a future based on feeling, and is grateful to a divine metaphor for the gifts of living. 

Science contemplates actions based on an initial state, imagines futures based on physical laws, predicts a likely future based on feeling, and is grateful for the gifts of living.

Since human feeling is at the root of choice for both science and religion, the real difference between science and religion is simply in the oral and written stories that science and religion recite. The collective wisdom of these stories resonates with the feelings of those who listen and therefore affects their feelings and the choices that they make for their futures. This recursion is what determines our reality.

Supernatural Free Will and Free Choice

Free will is a belief that we are personally responsible for the choices that we make and among other beliefs or axioms, a belief in free will is what anchors consciousness. We remember choices that we have made and that memory of choice is what we call free will. Since every choice involves many possible futures while there is just one reality, free will is therefore supernatural. Free will as a memory of choice does not exist as a natural part of the universe and we must simply belief in free will much like we believe in the quantum matter and quantum action of existence.

The fundamental uncertainty of choice means that choices are not precisely predictable and therefore free will is a direct result of our quantum universe. Without supernatural beliefs or axioms, the universe would be completely classical and free will and free choice would be illusions and all the choices that we make in life would be actually predetermined by the context of our life at any given moment. Determinate reasoning asserts that rewinding a choice back in time and reliving it with the exact same initial conditions would result in exactly the same outcome. Ergo, your entire life is set not only by the moment you come into existence, but also from the moment the universe came into existence as well.

In a deterministic universe, there is no sense to a neural superposition state between two possible futures, since the start of the universe determines all actions. If someone  chooses, that choice was always meant to be and was always predictable.

In a quantum universe, a neural superposition state entangles two possible choices and therefore entangles two possible futures. The future of an entangled choice is generally predictable but necessarily uncertain. A remnant of that entangled state persists as a memory of what we call free will.

In a deterministic universe, there is likewise no sense to a neural superposition state between two people. All actions are determined from the start of the universe. If someone else affects a choice for another person, that was always meant to be and was predictable. Two people that choose which of two doors to go through obviously choose one or the other door and in a deterministic universe, that future is already made and simply waiting for the illusion of free will.

In a quantum universe, a neural superposition state entangles two people and their choices and therefore entangles their futures as a superposition of possible and not certain futures. Even though the future of an entangled choice is generally predictable, it is also necessarily uncertain.

The future of an entangled choice is generally predictable but necessarily uncertain. A remnant of an entangled neural state persists as a memory that we call free will. Entanglement of the possible futures of two or more people is called compassion or selfishness. A compassionate choice is one possible future while a selfish choice is another possible future, both possibilities affect both people.

Although two people can choose between doors with a 50:50 probability just like a coin toss and decide their lives with that choice, there is no magic by which they would always choose the same doors given the exact same conditions in a replay of the universe. Our physical laws always predict that a coin toss will be statistically distributed 50:50 even with identical initial conditions, so the choice of two doors is likewise uncertain in a quantum universe.

This is another way of saying that people have many possible futures and do not actually follow the determinate geodesics of relativity. Given a choice between two doors, replaying a quantum coin toss will always show that same uncertainty. There is a neural entanglement between the two choices for one person people and an entanglement between two people and the two choices and that means their choices are also entangled for some short time. That superposition does not exist as a realized future, but rather only exists as a remnant of the neural entanglement as a memory that we call free will.

Without any other people around, there is no meaning to selfish versus compassionate choices. It is only given neural entanglement with the compassion and selfishness of other people that we say that people have a moral free will.

With fate or karma, there is then a question of moral responsibility...if we choose selfishness and murder someone given heads as a flip of a coin and then go ahead and commit murder given a heads result, we are obviously simply expressing a selfishness that had little to do with the outcome of tossing a coin. Life is a continuous series of discrete choices between compassion and selfishness and many of those choices are fairly predictable, but there are likewise many choices that we make that we can never understand.

Ah hah! you say, there must be a hidden variable between us and reality...and so if we replay the quantum coin toss with that hidden variable kept the same, then the exact same outcome will occur, right? Oh, but do not forget the many possible and therefore uncertain quantum futures. In other words, you as an observer will always affect your reality simply by tossing a coin, whether the choice is compassion or selfishness. Imagining that you do not affect a coin toss does not does not change the fact that you do and this is another conundrum of the recursion of consciousness.

We simply cannot step out of the universe that we are in, reset it, and step back in when we predict a coin toss. Not only is the coin toss uncertain, our choice of compassion or selfishness is likewise uncertain and subject to free will and moral responsibility. Every action that we take entangles many other people and changes the universe and even with all of our imaginings, we are always subject to the same universe that we imagine we are a part. Although we can imagine initial conditions that will result in the same outcome for a coin toss, it is simply not true in our quantum universe and the heads or tails is subject to the same uncertainty as the coin toss is in the first place.

Thus we are always free to choose between heads or tails and that is not an illusion but we can certainly believe that a free choice between heads and tails is an illusion. We can also freely choose compassion or selfishness based on a coin toss. Does this uncertainty of choice mean that free choice is in some sense accidental? At what point is a free choice predetermined? If a person chooses one door, there is no magic that would make the second person always choose the same door given a replay of the universe. Free will is therefore a part of how people entangle with other people.

It is often said that science defines a universe in which all action is an accident of our determinate classical physical laws and all objects follow the fates of their determinate geodesics. A geodesic is a predetermined path for an object that obeys the laws of gravitation and Einstein's relativity. In a determinate universe, the chaos of intersecting geodesics is what causes things to vary from their own determinate fates, not free choice. Determinism has no purpose beyond the purposes that people invent given the chaos of action. The determinate universe is an accident, our galaxy is an accident, our sun and planets are accidents, life is an accident, humans are an accident, and civilization is an accident.

In a determinate universe, there is no moral responsibility since it is the initial conditions of your life that determine how compassionate or selfish you will be in life, not your moral choices during life. And yet we live in an uncertain quantum and not a determinate classical universe. In a universe with uncertain futures we can and do believe in the discovery of our own purpose and we certainly would not be able to live without a nice sun to warm a nice earth or a nice galaxy to hold our nice sun or a nice universe to form our nice galaxy and for our evolution to have taken place. Without the evolution of life and of humans and of civilization, we would likewise have no purpose since there would be nothing for us to discover.

There is no purpose in discovery without free choice and there is no free choice without discovery. Once we can freely choose to discover how the universe works, all purpose naturally follows choice as a result of the pleasure of discovery. Recursively, given a purpose in the free choice of discovery, we can then freely discover the further pleasure of a desirable future.

In our universe, there are a number of possible futures for each moment, but only a single future ever becomes reality and that future occurs only within some uncertainty. Likewise our past is also fairly certain but always a result of some uncertainty. The universe evolves from simpler to increasingly complex states and the beauty and complexity of a galaxy evolves from the chaos of the actions of a hundred billion stars on a grand scale. The beauty and complexity of our solar system likewise evolves from the chaos of a cloud of hydrogen gas and other matter.

Just like life, a submicroscopic nanocrystal forms from chaotic matter of atoms at a very small scale in sometimes very mysterious ways. Never exactly in the same manner, nanocrystals form from atom numbers similar to the star numbers in a galaxy, ~100 billion. What an amazing accident! Thus the simple quantum actions of a collection of atoms spontaneously evolve into a complex nanocrystal with very high symmetry and order. Therefore the evolution of order from chaos is a very common phenomenon at all scale in our universe.

The choice of a coin toss decides compassion or selfishness just as does the outcome of the coin toss and so both the choice and outcome of a coin toss alters the course of our life and the entire universe. Our freedom to choose heads, then, necessarily alters the nature and extent of all possible futures and yet neither the choice of heads is preordained nor is the outcome of the coin toss preordained. It is therefore no surprise that people are naturally drawn to games of chance. Just as the outcome of a coin toss decides the course of a game, that outcome affects our life as well and our choice of heads further means that choice as a part of the pleasure of discovery.

We choose heads and our feeling evolves in a very similar manner as our galaxy evolves or even as a nanocrystal evolves and choice seems to occur for many phenomenon, not just for life and consciousness. If heads is the outcome, we win...tails we lose and it is human consciousness that simply discovers what we call choice as the basis of human action. We predict heads out of a chaos of many possible futures and given the outcome, then choose actions that evolve into complexity. Even a single conscious choice in the uncertain universe necessarily discovers a desirable albeit also a more complex future, in effect a conscious choice of heads catalyzes the evolution of reality given the outcome of the toss.

In addition to the rational choices that we make in life, there are also many instinctive choices that we make that do not require conscious thought. Such autonomic reactions are also inherently probabilistic and will be different beginning with the exact same life context. How we respond to the anxiety of predicting heads necessarily changes even if we somehow began with the same life context of the same coin toss.

Just because many of our life choices like compassion have very high likelihood does not mean that there are not many other choices in life like selfishness that are essentially coin tosses, i.e. fifty-fifty likelihood. A choice of heads comes down to the uncertainty of a single neuron firing, a single calcium ion, or a single electron in a neuron, and therefore all choice is subject to the same fundamental uncertainty as all of the quantum universe, including the outcome of the coin toss.

In fact, we make certain choices like heads, primal choices, that we cannot otherwise justify by any rational logic. These primal choices in essence define a context for our existence and thereby anchor our reality. Likewise our primal choices for origin, destiny, and purpose anchor each of our lives based largely on our feeling about these unfounded beliefs. Once we make a primal choice, that outcome anchors and guides our lives through the otherwise chaos of endless and inexplicable actions of matter in time.

Our choice of heads results in an evolution of feeling about the coin toss, i.e. our observations do affect the reality of the coin toss. Our feelings evolve after birth from very simple instincts or reflexes to the quite complex neural recursions that we call consciousness as adults. The evolution from simple to complex consciousness over a human lifetime is the same familiar pattern that repeats over and over again for physical phenomenon in the universe.

We imagine in our consciousness a set of possible futures, heads or tails, based on our past knowledge and experience. We then predict heads and flip the coin and if we win, choose further actions to journey to that selected future in a very complex and involved process that we call living. Any number of actions can discover the same future with equal likelihood, but our choice of heads still defines our universe even if the outcome were tails and we lost.

Neural Quantum Consciousness

There is something that happens to us in the time between a sensation and an action that is what we call free choice. However exactly what free choice means and exactly how human free choice differs from that of other animals and impaired humans is the grist of endless discourse.

It is useful to ask what free choice is like in terms of the aethertime axioms of matter, time, and action. Since free choice involves the matter of memory as well as the neural recursion of sensation-feeling-action, we conclude that free choice is very time-like. The definition of any of the trimal beliefs are only in terms of other trimals and time is therefore the quotient of matter and action. Just as the ticks of a clock as action evolve the position of the hands of a clock, time is both action and the matter of a clock's memory.

Free choice is therefore quite simply the memory of our neural recursion of sensation-feeling-action that we call experience. Of all the functions of free choice, then, feeling and emotion are the most specific to human biology. There may be an algorithm that is similar to human feeling and emotion, but without the biology of human feeling and emotion, the free choice of that algorithm will not be human.

We accumulate sensations with receiver organs and those sensations go through various sensory areas of our brain into the recursion layers of our cerebral cortex. All of this neural processing is quite complex and not always very well understood. One proposition is that our sensations disperse into the folded matter sphere that represents reality in our brain and those neural impulses are the superposition of each object's possibilities.

A neural recursion shown in the figure below complements an object's reality and shows how feeling binds sensation to an action in a neural recursion that we call experience. With our feeling, which is a recursion of an object's possibilities with a sensation, we select a possible future and then choose actions to journey to that future.

In matter time, there are two complementary representations for reality with the first one showing reality as objects on Cartesian time trajectories and is a particle-like reality. Our neurons are objects in Cartesian space since we imagine those objects either stationary, moving, or changing in some way.

A second and complementary representation for an object, though, is as a matter spectrum of all of an object's possible futures. This relational reality is less intuitive and is a kind of holographic version of a wave-like reality that is more difficult to imagine. Instead of neurons as Cartesian objects, neurons are defined by the relationships that they have with other neurons.

Our perceptions of objects come from sensations of a select few of an object's possibilities and not from an object's actual Cartesian trajectory in time. An object's Cartesian reality actually exists only as we project the actions of objects onto trajectories in time.

Any journey that I choose becomes an object trajectory in time. While I only perceive the possibilities of other objects, I journey in time as an object. At each moment, my body as an object is equivalent to a superposition of all possible futures determined by my relations with other objects. Each possible future represents what I might become during that moment as opposed to what I actually do become. Although I can normally predict my future reasonably well, any prediction of my future is always subject to some level of uncertainty.

That uncertainty is the result of the bonding relationship between a sensation and action that the reality-possibility neural recursion mediates and as the diagram shows. A neural quantum is the basic particle that binds our mind and all minds, like hydrogen is bound to the sun by gravity, like the stars are bound to a galaxy, like the galaxies are bound to the universe, a neural quantum is the fundamental particle of our neural universe, our mind.

Some portion of the integration of all neural particles with sensation and action is what we call free choice, neural packets. The interaction of the packets of our neural recursion with the trajectories of our physical universe is what we call reality and is reminiscent of the mind-body duality of Descartes. However in this neural recursion our free choice is not a different object, a mind, but rather a complementary form of reality and therefore the mind does not really exist separately from the body or physical universe.

In fact, the same quantum equation is the basis of both complements. The organization of our neural universe and its plasticity, its ability to restructure itself with recursion, represents our mind. In effect, each of us carries our own universe around with us and the choices we make and the actions we choose alter that neural universe along with our physical universe.

It is no mistake that this diagram resembles those of particle physics, so-called Feynman diagrams. Correspondingly, there is a Schrödinger equation that follows directly from that diagram. This quantum of free choice free choice represents mathematically the connection or nexus between the physical universe and the complementary neural universe.

This equation represents the binding of a neural quantum as a matter defect, m_R, just as the Rydberg energy is the binding energy of the hydrogen atom and the gravitational Rydberg energy is the binding energy of gravitational force.

Our inner and outer lives...

The ego and the id along with the conscious and the subconscious are both stories about human purpose. There are many, many different stories about something that we already know really well, our inner lives. Here is where language and thought can lead us to ask many questions that sound reasonable but actually have no rational answers. However, humans still imagine answers anyway and then create stories that answer those questions.

Language gives us a many different ways to describe our common experiences and as a result it is often difficult to identify common experiences when people describe them so differently with such different language.

It is obvious that each of us talks to ourselves in thought just like we would talk to someone in conversation, with language. It is equally obvious that our consciousness has fundamental limitations in what we can know, not the least of which is what we can know with that very language. 

Nevertheless we accumulate information and matter as memory through experience in order to better predict our future and to better predict journeys to a desired future. We select a future from a set of imagined futures based on our accumulated knowledge and feeling, and then choose actions to journey to that desired future.

All along the way our feeling evolves as our purpose evolves. We ask ourselves,

"Am I improving? Is my life better? Do I feel better?"

These are questions that we also ask others.

"Do you think I am improving? Do you think I look better? Do you feel better?"

What about asking for help, what about petitionery thought?

"Please help me find my path and understand my purpose."

To whom do we ask for help? Our subconscious? Other people? A supernatural agent?

What about gratitude, to whom do we give our gratitude?

"Thank you for the gifts of air, water, stone, soil and fire. Thank-you for the gifts of civilization and life and of the sun, galaxy, and universe. Thank you for the time that we have with each other and for the gifts that we share with each other."

Whom are we thanking? Ourselves? Our supernatural agents? Other people?

It is no little irony that we think in exactly the same manner as we pray and as we meditate−as if we are talking to another person. Therefore it is quite natural to suppose that there is someone with whom we are speaking and that these voices help us find our way in life. It is very gratifying to thank someone for our gifts.

Whether you call this asking or thanking yourself or you call it asking or thanking a deity, we do it the same way and it has the same effect on the evolution of our feeling. We generally feel better. This is the way we can think about matter-time agents without the clutter of more traditional supernatural agents.

Thus prayer, meditation, self-hypnosis, affirmations, tapping, conscious disagreement, visualization, sweat lodges, quests, and other spiritual experiences are all conversations that we ultimately have with ourselves as well as others. Whether you think of them as prayer or thought or mediation does not change the fact that they are all done in exactly the same way, as conversations with ourselves and others.

Interestingly enough, all of the conversations that we have with ourselves seem to have the same demonstrable effect on our feelings. They make us feel better and make our inner life better. Such conversations access parts of our mind that are beyond conscious thought and beyond language. So quite naturally humans give those parts of our consciousness any number of different labels and create any number of different stories about them.

The dao or way dates to ancient China and has been an evolving story first attributed to Laozi in 200-300 BCE but there have been any number of other contributors since then. The wisdom of the dao is in explaining the inexplicable and how to live a good life in spite of the misery of your circumstance. It was first written during the same period and region as were stories of Confucius and Buddha and the dao has a lot in common with those stories as a result. The truths from such stories are very similar to those that come from all religious stories and it a very useful exercise to extract the truths that resonate with your feeling.

Indian Hindus and Buddhists both fold their hands in greeting to acknowledge the inner supernatural life in each person. In Hinduism, the universe is filled with a large number of agents while in Buddhism, there are no agents, only the misery of life and the joy of nirvana, and yet both Hindus and Buddhists revere the inner self as supernatural. Meditation is done in exactly the same manner as prayer and people report exactly the same kinds of feelings, but most insist that meditation is quite different from prayer.

Hypnotic or drug-induced trances also seem to have much in common with prayer and mediation or even with contemplative thought. However, people seem to react quite viscerally to the suggestion that these various forms of thought seem to have much in common.

Quite naturally we imagine in our consciousness an existence that survives outside of our body, i.e. we imagine that we have a soul. The concept of an everlasting soul is so pervasive and so widespread that it is a compelling part of our human condition. The logic of physical reality, though, shows that the chemicals of emotion: dopamine, gaba, adrenaline, oxytocin, seratonin, anandamide, nitric oxide, etc. are all functions of our body chemistry. In so far as our feeling is based on these chemicals of emotion, how can our consciousness survive without the chemicals of emotion?

One might argue that the compassion is much more than just the neurochemical oxytocin. However, one might also wonder what compassion would be like without the reactions of a body to the effects of the release of oxytocin. Without sensation and action, imagination and feeling would have no anchors and consciousness would drift into a sea of dreams.

There is one way and only one way that consciousness survives the final dream of our inner life. Consciousness exists not in our own minds as an inner life but also exists as an outer life in the minds of other people outside of us and in objects that we have touched in our lives. We are conscious in the end not only because of our inner life, but also because of what others feel about us as our outer life. Our outer life's journey leaves a fossil record of actions in all that we have touched and the persistence of that fossil record is our outer life. This means that our outer life does indeed pass into eternity even as the inner life of our consciousness ceases to be. Our memories and the fossil matter of those who we have known are the inner lives of those that have touched our outer life.

And there is the further mystery that is the limit of reality, the limit of what we can ever know.

These limits are summarized in many different ways by many different peoples but in matter time, they are the trimal of origin, destiny, and purpose. Once you have consciously grounded your reality with these three primal beliefs, you will find life's purpose flowing like a silent mountain stream.