Empty Awareness

Consciousness or Nostalgia for the Divine?

It is popular to equate scalar fields with consciousness, and I've probably implied as much in the past. But now we are thinking it is a deeper domain and exploring that notion.

We tend to divinize the threshold of our own penetration into fine structure, but once we 'get it' it is just another functional operator, NOT any primal cause. This is a difficult line to walk, which may have more to do with human beliefs than the structure of reality itself. The so-called 'consciousness studies' experts are often hopeless at physics, relying on personal vision, professional reputation in related areas, and competetive intellectual turf wars.

The whole arena has been the source of much confusion as much on the 'inside' as for the onlooking public. Having watched the discussions for years, I can report hardly any consensus. Conscious 'awareness' and self-reflection is a whole other subject where both biological and metaphysical speculation is rife.

Mostly, it is probably a new age cultural MEME we find enticing as a replacement for older models of the sacred.  We just keep pushing that boundary back further and further. There is likely no even approximate way to describe anything like consciousness in action for quite some time. But there will be many theories with "hooks" and "buzzwords", such as intentionality, which may or may not have any bearing. They capture our attention and imagination.

They describe our current fantasies about Reality and embody our hopes and desires for some Divine Agency beyond our puny selves. The deep nature of reality is awesome, but there may not be any 'ghost in the machine' in terms of the standards of past historical epochs. All this is more bound up with trends in pop cultural and human beliefs and needs than subquantal physics. To presume otherwise may be painfully naive, and obscure the nature of Nature and our own nature, rather than revealing it. Still, the mystical analogies can be made.

In any case, whatever is going on, virtually or physically, we are THAT, of the same stuff as Cosmos. How we apply that knowledge is probably as important as how we interpret it. Scientists are not lining up at The Church of the Holy Scalar Field.
 

Radiant wholeness and the energetic Field of Being

EMPTY AWARENESS

The groundstate of our being is a psionically-charged FIERCE LUMINOSITY emanating from the vast roiling ocean of the creative vacuum – the endless sea of creation.  What IS is, and the primal matrix is the eternal shimmering, full vacuum of space -- IS-ness. Light is an excitation of empty space. The absolute vacuum is devoid of all structure, but the false vacuum contains frozen energies as photons, bosons, quarks, electrons and gravity.

Both mysticism and science describe the nature of deep reality in their different vocabularies. They have Nothing in common.  Science itself appears somewhat mystical when we realize that we don’t really know the nature of spacetime, gravity, light, electricity, magnetism, energy and mass (and antimatter) or the origin of our universe, but we have sometimes cherished beliefs about how they behave.

In each and every nano-instant, we are reborn at the birthplace of matter, much like a refreshing screen.  We are virtual dipoles capable of integrating coherent virtual energy from the vacuum and transducing it into usable EM energy. Electrically, this is called an "open path." This is our field body, or energetic form. All atoms, including those of our bodies, are 99.999% space with an accompanying informational content (holographic blueprint).

The quantum vacuum is a dynamic massless scalar field.  A scalar is a vector characterized by magnitude and time.  Scalar waves (virtual particle flux wave) in the virtual state massless charge flux do not breach the quantum level to become observable, yet they are real.  They are harmonic oscillations of the stress energy tensor of the vacuum. They cross the threshold of manifestation only briefly before they vanish.

In the vacuum state everything is disintegrated, but highly dynamic.  The vacuum is not an emptiness filled with massless charge, rather, it IS identically massless charge (disintegrated dynamicism).  Though no real particles are present, it is a plenum, not an emptiness.  It is also pure, undifferentiated action.

A curious thing has happened along the way to a Theory of Everything, which is that physics is taking a more and more mystical attitude in its descriptors of what remains essentially a great Mystery.  This mystery is compounded when we attempt to apply physics theories to biological organisms, including ourselves – the realm of biophysics.

Empty Awareness: Into the Mystic

In modern life, many are seeking meaning in both a deeper physical and spiritual understanding. The distinction is blurring as our understanding deepens.  Mystics of all religions have probed the deep nature of reality for millennia by looking within themselves.  They have found many reflections of the universe and the Void within in a mental vacuum state.

There is only one mind. We call it Universal Mind, or the Diamond Matrix.  Like the Dirac Sea, it is likened to an ocean of potential.  In the perennial philosophy, sacred truth says universal mind permeates everything throughout the whole universe. It is an unobservable infinite energy field – a sparkling, radiant diamond-expanse. 

This diamond-like clarity of truth unveiled is perceptible through meditation, wisdom, inspiration, creativity and genius. It is the source of Knowledge, gnosis.  There is tremendous spiritual potential in emptyness.  There is a correlation, if not identity, between the vacuum within of contemplatives and the vacuum without of science.

In Qabalah, it correlates with The Abyss and the three Veils of Negative Existence – Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur. It is the time-energy pump of manifestation, siphoning negative time from the virtual vacuum.  The Abyss is the relative vacuum and the Three Veils of Negative Existence are the absolute vacuum in Qabalah.

Dissolving old forms allows for self-organizing rebirth from one’s depths.  Dissolving utterly gives rise to the potential of holistic repatterning.  This is the model of the process of dynamic transformation, ego death and re-creation.  That which was solid becomes liquefied, dissolved, deliteralized.  The concrete image of the body and turbulent thoughts “morph” into the flow of pure undifferentiated energy potential.

A return to the absolute void is a return to the womb for rebirth after destructuring or creative regression.  It means a process of ego dissolution and personality deconstruction, swimming upstream against the flow of the stream of consciousness to our Unborn roots. We reach “escape velocity” beyond our personalistic behaviors, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs about who "we" are.

Consciousness "breaks up" into its elemental forms, manifesting as overwhelming imagery. This first phase of dissolution may be characterized by the futility of resistance, magnetic downward spirals, gravity wells, loss of morphological identity. The death throes of the ego prepare it for rebirth. Diamond Consciousness is aware of the flux of the void.

The ego "takes the plunge," it lets go and dissolves its old matrix, its old boundaries.  When its boundaries melt, ego-consciousness dissolves into deep consciousness.  The "wave merges with the ocean," and experiences its own deep transpersonal nature.  It moves swiftly through the fear and pain, awakening to an infinitely wider reality of universal energy waves.  In the ocean of creativity, "your own consciousness, shining, void and inseparable from the great body of radiance, has no birth, nor death." (Leary, 1964).

“All substances are part of my own consciousness.  This consciousness is vacuous, unborn, and unceasing."  Thus meditating, allow the mind to rest in the uncreated state.  Like the pouring of water into water, the mind should be allowed its own easy mental posture in its natural, unmodified condition, clear and vibrant.  --Leary, Metzner, Alpert, The Psychedelic Experience.

Jung associated universal mind, as the transpersonal source of being, with the Collective Unconscious, which contains all information in subtle form.  All things in the universe have a connection with the universal mind. Nothing can exist without that unmanifest connection to everything else. Separation is an illusion for we are all one.

All that is universal is contained in our human essence for we are not separate from that. Mathematician, Charles Muses describes the nature of our embodiment:  “Actually our bodies are like fountains [virtual dipoles]. The fountain has a shape only because it's being renewed every minute, and our bodies are being renewed. So we are standing waves; we are no exception.”  Visualizations, such as the qabbalistic Middle Pillar Exercise are designed to pump negentropy, as a fountain of light, into the practitioner.

He describes time as the master controller that cuts through the entire physical universe and holds all of space, though not necessarily in each point of space. Time is, therefore, bigger than space.  Wisdom traditions contend there is a fundamental unity between the universal mind and the cosmos itself -- including the unfolding of time.

Certain ancient and modern spiritual technologies are said to confer extraordinarily longer lifespans on their practitioners. Certain yogis, lamas and masters appear far younger than their chronological age. They attribute these youthful qualities to their meditation practice.  To meditate is a regenerative therapy in which we “die daily” into the unconditioned state and are instantaneously reborn.

The stability of matter itself is mediated by zero-point fluctuations (ZPF) of the electromagnetic field.  In each and every nano-instant, we a reborn at the birthplace of matter, much like a refreshing screen and therefore have the potential to reform utterly, instantaneously.  There is healing potential in immersion in the undifferentiated creative energy.

Sparkling Diamond Expanse

The meditation model describes direct apprehension of this experience as awareness of ‘Nothing whatsoever’, total blankness which is utterly open and indescribable, yet recognition of your timeless primal nature.  Cutting through mere stillness reveals an undivided, wide-awake, clear and vivid state. One penetrates the true nature of all phenomena.

The scientific and mystical views complement one another.  Primordial consciousness is the ultimate groundstate.  The ultimate vacuum is also the substrate of consciousness, which can be experienced as a relative mental phenomena during the direct experience of meditative quiescence.  The mind disengages from the sense and its own content.

This natural, unencumbered state of mind has an intrinsic radiance and purity.  Its radiant potential can be revealed by calming superficial turbulence and making the senses dormant.  Only the radiant state of clear consciousness remains.  All clarity comes from this luminous substrate shining through normal sensory and mental phenomena.

This state has been described as “an unfluctuating state, in which one experiences bliss like the warmth of a fire, luminosity like the dawn, and nonconceptuality like an ocean unmoved by waves.”

Terms may vary in different spiritual schools but the phenomenology of vivid luminosity remains the same.  Biochemically, it is likely related to pineal secretions of the natural psychedelic DMT (dimethyltryptamine). But this hormone alone cannot confer the trained ability to focus and concentrate, which stabilize the realization.

When we look within, this is what we see – the individual stream of consciousness. This relative vacuum experience does not liberate the mind nor is it absolute Reality. Our perceptions and concepts all arise in our consciousness not the objective physical world.

All phenomena emanate from absolute space, including those that constitute our subjective phenomenal experience. Absolute vacuum is only realized by contemplative insight in primordial consciousness.  Awareness becomes limitless in scope. All states are permeated by the clear light of primordial awareness.

The open fundamental nature of the mind meets the fundamental nature of the experienced world.  This nondual union is called The Great Perfection, or “One Taste.” (Wallace)  It is the lowest possible state of activity coupled with the highest potential for freedom possible. It is a boundless wellspring of inspired creativity.

Uncultivated meditation is called ‘sight without something to be seen,’ inexpressible awareness and means sustaining this empty, timeless view.  The “diamond vehicle” is radiant beyond bliss, unchanging and indestructible.  Past thoughts cease; future thoughts haven’t arisen. The mind rests in pure perception, the unfabricated, unconstructed mind – primordial presence divested of its veils. 

In Vajrayana practice this nature is fully present as wisdom or pristine awareness, the undeluded aspect and fundamental nature of the mind. Former vehicles of consciousness are known as "causal vehicles," but the Vajrayana is known as the "resultant vehicle" of clear light.

Finally, everything dissolves into the state of emptiness.  Since it is not a concrete thing, our essence, self-existing awareness, can neither permanently exist, nor be annihilated.  Space is naked revelation, devoid of constructs and beyond arising, duration and ceasing.

The alchemists, students of consciousness in matter, sought an elixir of life, a “medicine of philosophers”, a cure-all or panacea.  What the modern world yearns for is a “meta-syn,” or contemporary visionary synthesis rooted not in a mechanistic model but one using nature’s own forms of self-organization.  This unified field theory is the Holy Grail of physics.

Most meditation schools include a worldview or map of consciousness among their teachings.  They speak of domains beyond time and space and link it to an eternal realm and profound illumination. They describe theories of creation and our creation in metaphorical language and teach a way to penetrate our own depths into the finer essence of Reality with its underlying sacred Source. The Heart Sutra, for example, insists that all form is inherent in the void, and the void is the root of all form.

“Aether” means “shine” in Greek. The fundamental reality of such an unseen, fluidlike source of universal energy is the hallmark of the world’s secret mystery schools.  Greek philosophers Pythagoras and Plato discussed it at length.  Sanskrit Vedic scriptures call it “prana” and “Akasha,” or “rigpa.”

The Qigong model calls it “chi” or “ki,” or “mana,” with special emphasis placed on its interactions with the human body in martial arts and acupuncture. Adepts of this tradition learn to manipulate energy to allegedly create miraculous events, such as levitation, teleportation, manifestation, instant healing, telepathy and other spiritual powers.  Initiates have stressed the need to “raise your vibrations” for thousands of years.

Currently, energy medicine emphasizes holistic self-care of the energy body – the body electric -- for health and healing. New treatments for the EM fields of the body with low intensity lasers and other forms of light and sound are multiplying. Our bodies are essentially “frozen light” as is everything else. This light is transduced from the vacuum by the holographic blueprint of our DNA, which acts as a cymatic projector employing biophotonic light and sound (phonons) to read and manifest our genetic code. (Gariaev; Miller)

Brian Josephson (2003) describes what might be seen as Bardo or afterlife states: “Next we observe that a form of proto-life, defined as fluctuation patterns surviving longer than typical patterns do, can be hypothesized as occurring at the Planck scale, evolution of such life being expected to involve evolution of the accompanying informational systems also.  We get to the proposed model by supposing that the ordinary physical component and the informational component can evolve separately. and that the informational component can even survive the creation and destruction of individual universes, remaining as an ever-present background with which new universes, Planck scale fluctuations and more developed life forms can all beneficially interact.  Assuming an indefinitely extended time scale, the most persistent part of the informational background can evolve indefinitely, so that its dynamics might come to include features corresponding to mathematical concepts and operations as well.”

Cosmic Crystalline Vacuum

Buckminster Fuller spoke in quasi-mystical tones rhapsodizing about his sublime geometries, which bear a suspicious resemblance to zero-point. Jitterbugging Vector Equilibrium Matrix is not a structure but a system, the prime nucleated system.  Vector Equilibrium is not a structure but the prime nucleated system. VE models the 4th, 5th and 6th dimensionals with tetrahedra. Equilbirium between + and - is zero. VE is the true zero reference of energetic mathematics - cosmic zero.

Zero pulsation in the VE is a metaphorm of eternity and God: the zero-phase of conceptual integrity inherent in + and - symmetries. VE is important because all the nuclear tendencies to implosion and explosion are reversible and always in exact balance. VE models energetic events everywhere always, but is is non-observable. 

This metaphorm (V.E.) represents the self's initial real-I-zation both inwardly and outwardly from the beginning of being "betweeness"; maximum inbetweeness.  Push/pull; convergence/divergence; gravity/radiation.

At zero-point, waves can pass through other waves without interference. Vectoral phase or zone of neutral resonance balances outwardly pushing wave propagation and inwardly pulling gravitational coherence. This emptiness at the center of everything is the cosmic terminal condition and nature's most economical lines of energy travel. All 4 planes of all 8 tetrahedra are congruent in the four visible planes passing through a common VE center.. 

The dynamic activity connected with the drive to know, to penetrate, to illumine, culminates in a stillness, silence, cessation of all effort which itself dissolves in the tranquility of total negation. 0 = 2.  It is only by virtue of the fact that it is Naught.  All form and power are latent in the Void.

The Crown of Creation

Spiritual teachers warn us not to confuse the finer planes of luminous spiritual being with the physical domain of physics, even quantum mechanics. Still, some parallels can be drawn with conceptual or theoretical benefits for deepening our conceptual and experiential understanding.  There is a virtual replica (VR) of all matter, including living organisms, in the vacuum. Resonance and oscillation is accompanied by modulation of virtual particle/antiparticle pressure waves.

We come from, are sustained by and are returning to the light of our mass, radiant energy.  It is the mass-free, force-free form that energy takes in space before its interaction with mass creates force. The most we can say about our so-called physical existence is that we are standing wavefronts in spacetime. To truly live from that place is to identify ultimately with a superluminal massless body of light, the Diamond Body. That is the true nature of the vehicle of our consciousness, our essence.

***

There seem to be some evidence that consciousness, at the most fundamental levels, is a quantum process. But consciousness may not be limited to that; it may be more primordial than the subquantal domain.

Many have made the quantum mind argument.  It has been mathematically shown that subquantum particles/waves can perform some pretty amazing "dance steps" as they wiggle and jiggle about in attempts to connect and disconnect in ever new and more creative ways in their intimate interactions with one another.  Basically, all energy is "created" from a "nothingness" that we call virtual photons.

Cells are made up of molecules, which are made up of atoms, which are made up of atomic particles like electrons, protons, and neutrons, which are in turn made up of sub-atomic particles like leptons, mesons, and baryons.  Each of these particles is also simultaneously an energy wave, and each of these particle-waves has an opposite "twin" somewhere in the universe.  Theoetically, an anti-particle is a particle moving backwards in time.

When a quantum particle and its anti-particle collide, they mutually vanish in opposite directions in a "puff of light" called a photon.  A photon has what is called "zero-rest mass," because at rest, it has no mass.  It's resting energy is always equal to the speed of light, which (from within our reality demension) can be neither slowed down nor speeded up.

There is another way photons manifest in our universe. In their "non-being"--being state, they are called virtual (as opposed to actual) photons.  These virtual energy quanta, from our finite perspective, are continusously being simultaneously emitted and absorbed by electrons.  This is the process whereby the electromagnetic force which holds all of life together is created and maintained.

Quantum particles carry either a negative, positive or neutral charge, and  have a metaphoric characteristic known as angular momentum, or "spin."  Spin actually describes a particle's idea of spatial orientation as it moves away from its point of origin rather than any actual rotation.  Similar kinds of electrical charges repel one another because of their equal saturation of virtual photons, and opposites attract because of an unequal saturation of virtual photon energy.  Neutrons are neutral. The dance of repulsion/attraction enables atoms to join into molecules with orbiting electrons. It is the glue of the universe.

Consciousness is a complex emergent phenomenon, one born of many discrete events fusing together as a single experience. Thus it can be seen that life exists not merely on the temporo-spatial plane of our linear reality, but also is suspended, somewhat simultaneously, within a timeless, massless, dimensionless level of reality. 

We are particles; we are probability waves.  We are matter; We are energy.  We are body; We are mind; We are psychophysical.

In this dynamic model there are no “things”, just energetic events. Light and sound (acoustic cymatics) modulate all matter. This “holoflux” includes the ultimately flowing nature of what is, and all possible forms. All the objects of our world are three-dimensional images formed of standing and moving waves by electromagnetic and nuclear processes. This is the guiding matrix for self-assembly, and manipulating and organizing physical reality. It is how our DNA creates and projects our psychophysical structure.

Our brains mathematically construct ‘concrete’ reality by interpreting frequencies from another dimension. This information realm of meaningful, patterned primary reality transcends time and space. Thus, the brain is an embedded hologram, interpreting a holographic universe.  Supernal light emerges from this ground of being, both in the cosmos and our human brains and bodies.

All existence consists of embedded holograms within holograms, fractally embedded waves within waves of clear light.  Their interrelatedness somehow gives rise to our existence and sensory images. When we embody this intimate wisdom, our bodies become temples of the living spirit.

Absolute space is the womb of creation and the physics of virtual photon fluctuation reflects not only Nature, but also our nature.  Only now are we learning just how literal that experience of Light is, and the interactive mechanisms it engages in our holistic psychophysical Being.

Higher dimensional structures can be designed which, by their shape and topology, are stable.  Such forms have been suggested as models for consciousness and the soul. It may be more than a poetic expression, metaphor. or perception; it may be a holographic blueprint in the vacuum ether, which is capable of taking and sustaining impressions as well as guiding the unfoldment of the energetic and material manifestation. It is a complex self-organizing system. The hypercube (the Diamond Body) and Vector Equilibrium are dynamic hyperdimensional structures that relate directly to the sacred geometries of many mystical traditions (i.e., Merkabah; Cube of Space, Flower of Life, Sri Yantra).

Qabalah describes the emanation of all and everything from the Three Veils of Negative Existence: Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur. It describes the archetypal, mental, emotional and physical bodies of mankind from an energetic foundation that is synonymous with primordial Spirit. The Tree of Life emanates from the Negative Veils in the geometry of the face-centered cubic close-packed formation, which is the atomic blueprint of carbon and the diamond.  Our energetic bodies are modeled from this ethereal virtual substrate which undergirds our synergetic existence.

The Buddhist conceptualization of universes has no initial creation event, but instead speaks of infinitely repeated cycles of expansion, stability, destruction, and quiescence. Oscillations.

Buddha tells us that, "There is an Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed.  If there were not this Unborn, this Unoriginated, this Uncreated, this Unformed, escape from the world of the born, the originated, the created, the formed would not be possible."  But there is this essential ground, and it is possible to "escape" spacetime, according to Buddha.

SONG OF THE VAJRA (Tibetan Buddhist)

Unborn,
Yet continuing without interruption,
Neither coming nor going, omnipresent,
Supreme Dharma,
Immutable space, beyond definition,
Spontaneously, self liberating.
Perfect state without any obstruction,
Existent from the very beginning,
Self created, without location,
With nothing negative to reject,
And nothing positive to accept,
Infinite expanse, all pervading,
Immense and limitless, unbound,
With nothing even to dissolve
Or from which to be liberated.
Present beyond Space and Time,
Existent from the beginning,
Immense dimension of inner space,
Radiance of clarity like sun and moon,
Self perfected,
As indestructible as the Vajra
As stable as a mountain,
As pure as a lotus,
Strong as a lion,
Incomparable bliss
Beyond all limits;
Illumination,
Equanimity,
Peak of the Dharma,
Light of the Universe,
Perfect since the very beginning.

"Nonexistence is eagerly bubbling in the expectation of being given existence....For the mine and treasure-house of God's making is naught but nonexistence coming into manifestation." ~Rumi

"The workshop and treasure of God is in nonexistence: You are deceived by existence, so how should you know about nonexistence." ~Rumi

The Tao is an empty vessel; 
it is used, but never filled.
Oh, unfathomable source 
of ten thousand things!

Oh, hidden deep but ever present!
I do not know from whence it comes.
It is the forefather of the gods.

Lao Tzu ~Tao te Ching

It has been established that a particle has no measurable dimensions in our reality, but is merely a hypothetical entity with the potential to have mass (energy) as one of its characteristics.  So, it is really just a symbol that we use to describe the movement, or interactive relationships of energy within our four-dimensional reality.  One of the ways we are here describing life in our reality zone is as an elaborate energy/information-transducing process whose purpose it is to enable us as its chief frequency-modulators, to become more highly conscious of, and thus individuated within, that process.

It seems fitting to conclude this theory by also metaphorming a mechanically stable energy-reinforcing structure upon which this process can take shape.  And, since energy particles can now be imagined to exist as potential shapes in space, it follows that there must be some rules and regulations that its virtual energy shapes must follow in order to become actuated.

"We can ground our consideration of this space in which our bodies as well as all forms are arising as being a very profoundly coherent field.... much more coherent than matter which can be thought of as arising as deformations or asymmetries within this immensely coherent and radiant quantum plenum." ~Mark Comings