Absolutey the most fabulous article I have read in YEARS! You have a real genius, Paul!

Yes, very interesting article. Of course, any article referring to RAW & John Lilly is good in my book.

I've looked at this issue of consciousness as a sort of unifying field for some time. There's agreat book called "The Self-Aware Universe" that argues many similar points as you do in the article. I tend to intuitively feel that consciousness is a very powerful aspect of reality, but the thing that I always get hung up on is the fossil record.

If consciousness is necessary to collapse the wave function into the "formality of occurence" (to quote McKenna quoting Whitehead), how is it that trilobites existed? Or before them, spirochetes and diatoms? What about simple geology? I could accept perhaps that even diatoms are conscious, but rocks? Does this consciousness extend into the quantum realm? I think the definition of "consciousness" needs deep exploration before it can be thought of as a fundamental force of nature.

In a sense, the theory posits a requires a sort of supra-consciousness that has always existed and overseen the creation of the universe - an Eye of God collapsing the waveform of Creation (which may not be far from the truth...Kabbalah certainly has spoken of this for quite some time). So perhaps the Von Neuman Catastrophe is actually proof of God...

But as a caveat, I would suggest that while the mathematics of quantum mechanics have not been able to resolve the Von Neuman Catastrophe this may simply be a shortcoming of the math, rather than a proof of infinite quantum indeterminancy. But of course all of our maths and philosophies are merely maps which can never have a 1:1 relationship to nature. The closer that the map approximates infinity, the more it becomes indistinguishable and inseparable from the Absolute. The pure face of God destroys all those who gaze upon its countenance.

Once one reaches even the sligtest vistas of freedom from conditioning the world which we belong becomes a rather frigtening reality. Peraps the purpose of ALL existemce is to find ways to TRANSCEND limitations. To accept the known as unknown and the unknown as NOT YET KNOWN, for Object and Subject are inseparably related and iterchageable in the realms of Quantum.
"When thoght objects vanish,the thinking-subject vanishes,as when the mind vanishes,objects vanish.
Things are objects because of the subject(mind); the mind(subject) is souch because of things (object)." -SENGSTAN-

Immints.org is featuring a headline article by Paul Hughes (I don't know exactly who he is) that reviews some of the latest thinking about how the human mind works and the importance and existence of "free will". It's an interesting read at the same time, I'm not happy with Paul Hughes' notion of "psychedelic futurism". The theory he seems to promote is that consciousness itself can be separated out from the cognitive associations we have developed from our surrounding culture, and that this is something to pursue. Well, I might agree with him that you can wipe out associations in the human mind so that a person can be stripped of identity associations to be left with sort of a pure sense of being. However, Hughes' seems to think that this is a good thing. I'm not so sure that it is. I think it might be deadly. [+]

His website, "Futurehi.net" [+], is so loaded with HTML code that I can't read it on 56k bandwidth despite my Linux internet appliance (which is really quite fast), so Paul's "pschedelic futurism" probably isn't for the slow-netters like myself anyway. The implication of the name "futurehi" is that everyone, in the future, will be "high", as in "high on psychedelic consciousness". At least that's how I interpret his choice of labels. I think he's probably leading people down the wrong path to the future, if this guess at what he's implying is true.

The "real" future, in Classical Futurehumanist thought, incorporates that pure sense of consciousness with a solid connection to a culturally and historically determined set of reasoned values and ideas that actually enable mankind to transform the universe, including mankind himself. This transformation will include an increased carrying capacity for the Earth and the immediate vicinity of space and next door neighbour planets, as well as an increased life expectency and increased non-aging half life from a current 1600 years to at least 10,000 years.

The disconnection between the historical link to past generations of humankind, which psychedelic futurism implies, could in fact, be very deadly and dangerous because without the cultural connections, we all become as prone to brainwashing as, say, Patty Hearst did (as Hughes' uses Hearst as an example). So watch out for Paul Hughes! We'll find out more about his background and agenda as we go along.

Hughes did not make any mention of cryonics in the article about free will, linked above, so it would be interesting to find out if he, in his pursuit of his psychedelic future, includes cryonics as a way to get there. I'll try to find out.

LVX23,

You are correct in surmising that in order for my reasoning to remain consistent, everything, including rocks have to be conscious. I highly recommend you read David Chalmers on this topic for a complete logical breakdown of why this is most likely the case. In terms of complex, self-referential consciousness like we enjoy, it seems pretty evident that that is equivalent to sufficient complexity.

I find it interesting that people have such a hard time accepting consciousness as a fundamental, when they can so easily accept some weird m-brane or quark-lepton soup as primary. Weird.

As much as people want to cling to a clockwork determinist universe, it is in flat contradiction to 70 years of empirical data and scientific scrutiny. The conscious observer is required to collapse the wave function. No scientific experiment has yet been able to disprove this. If you want to insist that the math must be incomplete, that is your prerogative, but until you can demonstrate it empirically, it seems like nothing more to me than wishful thinking.

The paradigm of a clockwork deterministic Newtonian universe was completely shattered with the birth of Quantum Mechanics.

I don't question indeterminism, nor do believe at all in clockwork mechanism (this should be evident from my post). I am mainly suggesting that the term "consciousness" needs to be clearly defined with respect to our common definitions which are tied to self-awareness and individual sentience. If, as you suggest, we extend the definition to regard consciousness as a fundamental field that, in some circumstances, will localize into a physical container, then I would be more inclined to agree with your thesis that "observation" (which also needs to be defined with respect to this extended definitio of consciousness) is fundamental to collapsing the wave vector.

Also I tend to be wary of maths in their ability to really get things right. It's an evolving process and many things which seemed mathematically impossible 100 years ago are now accepted as fact.

LVX23,

Yes. Perhaps I should have been clearer. There is consciousness, then there is consciousness of consciousness, or self-awareness. When you examine in the depth the body of my argument, several conclusions can be drawn.

1) Primary Consciousness (receptors) preceded the physical universe, as they are necessary for physical particles to emerge from collapse of the wave function.

2) Consciousness is necessary for there to be any reality at all, physical or not.

3) Material reality is a subset of consciousness.

4) Everything is conscious, rocks, trees, cats, people.

5) At the very least people are SELF-conscious, which seems to require sufficient reflexive complexity to formulate idea of self and awareness. Are rocks self-conscious or cats? Hard to say, that is a very good question though. In other words, consciousness may have preceded materiality, but can self-consciousness exist before it? I think it can, and it makes sense to me that it does, but I haven't figured out a way to articulate it rigourously. Perhaps that will be my next big project.

the article has some point about iterations.

but about consciousness and wave function collapse there is misinterpretation here - its the observation which already collapses the wave function, not consciousness. consciousness reads the observed and collapsed results much later.

Help! I've been looking for the book by R.A.W. where the quote about every science being a neur-science and I can't seem to find it. There's a similar bit in the Glossary at the beginning of "The Illuminati Papers" but I can't find the book containing the quote you're using. Which one is it, please?

Thanks! BTW, the article seems Very Good to me.

Burk, the book in question is the Illuminati Papers - see this definition here:

http://www.futurehi.net/glossary.html#NEURO

Paul,
Thanks. I guess I had it in front of me the whole time... though I seem to remember that R.A.W went further into the whole "neuro" thing in one of his books. Maybe not...