One of the ideas that keeps resurfacing in both physics and consciousness research is the possibility that reality may not be as solid or as locally contained as it appears.
If the brain is receiving consciousness from something what is the thing transmitting it? our human experience is not singular but rather interconnected and that makes me wonder there are levels and layers to consciousness
Nice seeing your name pop up! Of course, I find myself wondering the same thing. If consciousness isn't created by the brain, then where is it coming from?
I don't know, but I do relate to the feeling that our experience seems bigger than our individual selves. We influence each other, learn from each other, and seem connected in ways that are difficult to fully explain. Whether that's evidence of different layers of consciousness or something else entirely, it's a question that keeps pulling me back in.
At some point every model, no matter how elegant, still has to account for the fact that there is a witness to the model itself.
And that changes everything.
Because if awareness cannot be located inside the image, then maybe it is not produced by the image at all, but is the condition that makes the image possible in the first place.
That’s where the holographic metaphor becomes most interesting to me: not as an explanation of reality, but as a clue that what we call matter may already be downstream of something prior to observation itself.
Most certainly I am over simplifying the holographic model. Here are my thoughts. Perhaps it is similar to memory and vision filling in the missing parts. Memories are fluid and variable. Our brain fills in the missing parts. The same with vision. We are capable of seeing a very small amount of our life, yet the brain takes that bit and fills in the rest. Each of us sees similarly, but not exactly identical.
Not as reality being “fake,” but as what we consciously experience being an active construction rather than a direct mirror.
Memory fills gaps. Vision fills gaps. Meaning fills gaps.
And what’s fascinating is that this doesn’t only happen in cognition, but in trauma as well. The nervous system often completes patterns before full information arrives, based on what it has learned to expect.
So in that sense, perception is always part memory, part present signal.
Which raises the deeper question: if the mind is constantly filling in the world, what is it that witnesses both the signal and the reconstruction?
yes, that's where the mystery begins for me too. We can study the signal. We can study the reconstruction. But the question of what is aware of both... that gets deeper the longer I ponder it.
Yes. And the deeper I sit with it, the more I suspect that the witness is not located anywhere inside the reconstruction. Not in the brain, not in the field, not in the gap between signals. The witness is the space in which both the signal and the reconstruction appear. That is not a place you can study. It is a place you can only be.
That is the shift from observing to resting. Not a solution. Just a different relationship to the question itself.
I appreciate you sitting in this with me. It is rare to find someone willing to stay in the not-knowing instead of rushing to fill it.
Yes. That is the secret that gets buried under all the models. The questions that have no answers are not failures of understanding. They are invitations to wonder. And wonder is not a detour from truth. It might be the most direct path to it.
Thank you for sitting here with me. I have a feeling this will not be the last time our paths cross.
did anyone studied buddhism, especially non-dual teachings of Dzogchen? Buddhism is NOT a religion, faith is NOT a way of progressing. It is the teaching - Dharma - about the nature of all phenomena. The key is the understanding and later experience through meditation. Nature of all phenomena is emptiness, meaning, that are not physical (space-time is appearing, not existing), but MIND itself of the one, who is thinking or experiencing. And there are countless parallel, individual universes, for each individual mind one. And all is non-dual, totally interconnected. Beyond the possibility of intellectual understanding (as there is no subject-object dualism), just non-dual experiencing…
If the brain is receiving consciousness from something what is the thing transmitting it? our human experience is not singular but rather interconnected and that makes me wonder there are levels and layers to consciousness
Nice seeing your name pop up! Of course, I find myself wondering the same thing. If consciousness isn't created by the brain, then where is it coming from?
I don't know, but I do relate to the feeling that our experience seems bigger than our individual selves. We influence each other, learn from each other, and seem connected in ways that are difficult to fully explain. Whether that's evidence of different layers of consciousness or something else entirely, it's a question that keeps pulling me back in.
What keeps pulling at me with the holographic model is this:
If reality is a projection, what is the projector?
Physics can map the image. It can even model the informational substrate. But the deeper question remains untouched.
What is it that knows the image at all?
That may be where consciousness stops being a byproduct and starts becoming primary.
Yeah, I love this question because it points to the place where so many explanations seem to run into a wall…
We can get increasingly sophisticated in describing the image, the mechanism, or the information being processed,
but eventually we're still left with the fact that there is an experience of it all. There is something that “knows”
Whether consciousness is ultimately primary or not, I think you're directing to one of the deepest mysteries we have.
Not how reality appears, but why there is awareness of it in the first place.
It can make your head spin.
Exactly. That’s the wall.
At some point every model, no matter how elegant, still has to account for the fact that there is a witness to the model itself.
And that changes everything.
Because if awareness cannot be located inside the image, then maybe it is not produced by the image at all, but is the condition that makes the image possible in the first place.
That’s where the holographic metaphor becomes most interesting to me: not as an explanation of reality, but as a clue that what we call matter may already be downstream of something prior to observation itself.
Most certainly I am over simplifying the holographic model. Here are my thoughts. Perhaps it is similar to memory and vision filling in the missing parts. Memories are fluid and variable. Our brain fills in the missing parts. The same with vision. We are capable of seeing a very small amount of our life, yet the brain takes that bit and fills in the rest. Each of us sees similarly, but not exactly identical.
Yes, that’s very close to how I see it too.
Not as reality being “fake,” but as what we consciously experience being an active construction rather than a direct mirror.
Memory fills gaps. Vision fills gaps. Meaning fills gaps.
And what’s fascinating is that this doesn’t only happen in cognition, but in trauma as well. The nervous system often completes patterns before full information arrives, based on what it has learned to expect.
So in that sense, perception is always part memory, part present signal.
Which raises the deeper question: if the mind is constantly filling in the world, what is it that witnesses both the signal and the reconstruction?
That’s where the mystery begins for me.
yes, that's where the mystery begins for me too. We can study the signal. We can study the reconstruction. But the question of what is aware of both... that gets deeper the longer I ponder it.
Yes. And the deeper I sit with it, the more I suspect that the witness is not located anywhere inside the reconstruction. Not in the brain, not in the field, not in the gap between signals. The witness is the space in which both the signal and the reconstruction appear. That is not a place you can study. It is a place you can only be.
That is the shift from observing to resting. Not a solution. Just a different relationship to the question itself.
I appreciate you sitting in this with me. It is rare to find someone willing to stay in the not-knowing instead of rushing to fill it.
I agree! It's a beautiful thing to sit and ruminate on the questions we have no answers to and ponder the wonder of the universe.
Yes. That is the secret that gets buried under all the models. The questions that have no answers are not failures of understanding. They are invitations to wonder. And wonder is not a detour from truth. It might be the most direct path to it.
Thank you for sitting here with me. I have a feeling this will not be the last time our paths cross.
Wow! Bohm was ahead of his time! I didn't know anything about him until you mentioned him here. And, I love his ideas!
He really really was! I have more articles on him. When I get a chance I will go back and tag you in the comments if you want to check them out :)
I’d love to! Thanks!
Guys,
did anyone studied buddhism, especially non-dual teachings of Dzogchen? Buddhism is NOT a religion, faith is NOT a way of progressing. It is the teaching - Dharma - about the nature of all phenomena. The key is the understanding and later experience through meditation. Nature of all phenomena is emptiness, meaning, that are not physical (space-time is appearing, not existing), but MIND itself of the one, who is thinking or experiencing. And there are countless parallel, individual universes, for each individual mind one. And all is non-dual, totally interconnected. Beyond the possibility of intellectual understanding (as there is no subject-object dualism), just non-dual experiencing…