The Individual as a Quantum State of Awareness
Awareness, Identity, Intelligence and the Expression of Universal Awareness
Abstract
Quantum mechanics describes reality through states. It has achieved extraordinary predictive success, but it arose historically from observed physical results rather than from an identified Cause of existence.
The present theory proceeds in the opposite direction.
It begins from Awareness as Cause. The physical substrate arises from Awareness, and everything subsequently formed from that substrate belongs to the same causal continuity. Awareness therefore does not suddenly appear with life, the nervous system, or the brain. It precedes them.
What changes with life is not the existence or quantity of Awareness, but its capacity for expression.
A stone possesses no intelligence and no senses and therefore provides no means through which Awareness can express itself. Living systems introduce sensory capability. As sensory organization and intelligence increase, the possible expression of Awareness increases with them. At sufficiently high levels, Awareness can even become aware of itself.
Identity provides the second essential element. Universal Awareness is one, while Identities are countless. Each living individual can consequently be understood as a unique state through which universal Awareness is expressed according to the sensory and intelligent capabilities of that individual.
Each living individual is a unique quantum state of universal Awareness, distinguished by Identity and capable of expressing Awareness according to its sensory and intelligent organization.
This proposition is not derived from conventional quantum mechanics. Quantum theory supplies a useful language of states. The proposition itself is derived in the opposite direction - from Cause toward result.
1. Beginning from the Cause
Most physical theories begin with observations.
Something happens. It is measured. Regularities are discovered. Mathematics is developed to describe those regularities and predict what will happen under other conditions.
This approach has produced extraordinary scientific achievements.
But there is a fundamental distinction between describing the behaviour of reality and identifying why reality exists in the first place.
The present theory begins from the opposite end.
It begins with Cause.
And that Cause is Awareness.
Awareness is therefore not introduced at some late stage of cosmic or biological development.
It is not produced by matter.
It is not produced by life.
It is not produced by a nervous system.
It is not produced by a brain.
It precedes all of them.
AWARENESS
to
SUBSTRATE
to
PHYSICAL REALITY
to
MATTER AND STRUCTURE
to
LIFE
to
SENSES
to
INTELLIGENCE
to
EXPRESSION OF AWARENESS
Everything following the first step belongs to a continuous causal development from Awareness.
There is therefore no point at which Awareness must somehow be inserted into an otherwise unaware universe.
It was there from the beginning because it was the Cause of the beginning.
2. The Substrate as the First Physical Consequence
Within this theory, Awareness gives rise to the physical substrate.
The substrate is therefore not an independently existing medium upon which Awareness later acts.
It is the first physical consequence of Awareness.
Everything subsequently formed - energy, radiation, particles, matter, stars, planets, chemical structures and ultimately living systems - arises through states and organizations of that substrate.
The causal continuity is therefore never broken.
Awareness to Substrate
Substrate to Physical Reality
Everything belonging to physical reality ultimately follows from Awareness.
This removes one of the most persistent difficulties encountered when Awareness is treated as a late biological phenomenon.
There is no need to explain how a completely unaware universe suddenly produces Awareness.
The theory never contains a completely unaware universe.
Awareness precedes physical reality.
3. Presence Is Not Expression
The presence of Awareness is not the same as the expression of Awareness.
This distinction prevents an immediate misunderstanding.
If Awareness is fundamental and everything follows from it, does this mean that a stone thinks?
No.
Does a particle perceive its surroundings?
No.
Does an atom experience the world as an animal does?
No.
These conclusions do not follow.
A stone has no intelligence.
It possesses no sensory system capable of providing information through which Awareness can express itself.
Its expression of Awareness is therefore effectively zero.
This does not mean that the stone exists outside the causal reality of Awareness.
It means that it possesses no mechanism through which Awareness can be expressed.
Awareness is universal.
Expression of Awareness is conditional.
4. The Importance of Senses
What allows Awareness to become expressed?
The answer is remarkably simple:
Senses.
Without information there is nothing upon which Awareness can act as experience.
A system must in some way distinguish changes in itself or its environment before Awareness can be expressed through that system.
Life introduces precisely this capability.
The earliest sensory mechanisms need not resemble eyes, ears, noses, or nervous systems.
At its most elementary level, sensing means that a living system can detect a difference and respond to it.
Light. Temperature. Chemical concentration. Pressure. Contact. Movement.
The environment begins to become accessible to the living individual.
A channel has opened.
Through that channel, Awareness can begin to express itself.
Awareness requires senses for its expression.
Not for its existence.
For its expression.
5. Intelligence as Increasing Capacity for Expression
Sensing alone provides information.
Intelligence determines what can be done with that information.
As living organization becomes more sophisticated, sensory information can be combined, compared, remembered, interpreted and used to determine increasingly complex behaviour.
Thus a hierarchy develops.
A very simple living organism may detect only a limited range of environmental changes.
A more complex organism may integrate several sensory channels.
Still more advanced organisms may remember previous events, anticipate consequences, recognize individuals, solve problems and modify behaviour according to experience.
At still greater levels of intelligence, an individual may form abstract concepts and examine its own existence.
Throughout this hierarchy, Awareness itself has not increased.
What has increased is the capacity for its expression.
Increasing intelligence does not mean increasing Awareness.
Increasing intelligence means increasing capacity for expression of Awareness.
The same universal Awareness can therefore have radically different degrees and forms of expression according to the organization through which it operates.
6. From Awareness to Self-Awareness
At sufficiently advanced levels of sensory integration and intelligence, something extraordinary becomes possible.
Awareness can become an object of its own expression.
The individual does not merely sense:
Something exists.
It can eventually recognize:
I exist.
And beyond that:
I am aware that I exist.
This is self-awareness.
Self-awareness should therefore not be confused with Awareness itself.
Awareness is fundamental.
Self-awareness is a highly developed expression of Awareness made possible by sufficient sensory and intelligent organization.
Universal Awareness
to
No Expression
to
Elementary Expression
to
Complex Expression
to
Self-Awareness
7. Identity
Universal Awareness alone does not explain why living reality consists of separate individuals.
For this we require Identity.
Identity establishes distinction.
It makes one individual this individual rather than another.
Identity is not merely a name.
It is not memory.
It is not personality.
It is not intelligence.
It is not species.
All of these can describe or characterize an individual, but none constitutes the fundamental fact that this individual is not another individual.
Identity supplies that distinction.
Awareness is one.
Identities are countless.
The existence of countless Identities does not divide Awareness into countless separate substances.
It creates countless distinguishable states within the reality arising from one Awareness.
8. The Individual as a State of Awareness
We can now introduce the language of quantum states.
Let universal Awareness be represented by:
A
Let a particular Identity be represented by:
I(i)
Let the unique individual state associated with that Identity be represented conceptually by:
A(i)
Then:
A(1) is not A(2)
because:
I(1) is not I(2)
Yet both states ultimately belong to the same universal Awareness.
A + I(i) produces A(i)
This does not mean that Awareness has been divided.
Nor does it mean that Awareness has been created anew.
It means that universal Awareness exists through a particular distinguishable state associated with a unique Identity.
Each living individual is a unique quantum state of universal Awareness.
The degree to which Awareness can be expressed through that state depends upon the sensory and intelligent organization of the individual.
9. One Awareness, Countless Individuals
This principle is not restricted to humans.
Human beings represent only one range within an immense hierarchy of living organization.
A dog possesses senses and intelligence different from ours.
A bird experiences dimensions of its environment differently.
An insect operates through sensory structures and neural organization radically different from those of mammals.
Other forms of life may possess still simpler channels of interaction.
None needs to be human to constitute an individual.
The relevant distinction is not human versus non-human.
It is the degree and nature of the physical capacity through which Awareness can be expressed.
Across the history of life, countless individuals have existed.
Yet the theory requires only one fundamental Awareness.
The multiplicity belongs to Identity and state.
One Awareness. Countless Identities. Countless individual states.
10. The Quantum-State Analogy
Why call these individual manifestations quantum states?
Not because conventional quantum mechanics has established universal Awareness.
It has not.
Standard quantum mechanics arose from experimental results.
Its historical direction was approximately:
Observation to Mathematical State to Prediction
The present theory travels in the opposite direction:
Cause to Substrate to Physical Reality to State to Observation
Quantum mechanics approached the state from the side of the result.
The present theory approaches it from the side of the Cause.
This distinction is fundamental.
Quantum mechanics cannot be expected to have discovered universal Awareness when Awareness belongs to a causal level from which quantum mechanics did not begin.
Yet quantum mechanics developed a remarkably useful conceptual language for describing distinguishable states of an underlying physical reality.
That language can therefore be employed here without claiming that quantum mechanics itself derived Awareness.
Quantum theory supplies the concept of the state.
The causal theory supplies its origin.
11. Cause to Result Versus Result to Cause
Conventional Quantum Mechanics
Observed Result
to
Measurement
to
Mathematical State
to
Probability
to
Prediction
The Present Theory
Awareness / Cause
to
Substrate
to
Physical Organization
to
Identity
to
Individual State
to
Sensory and Intelligent Expression
to
Observable Result
One works predominantly backward and sideways from observations.
The other attempts to work forward from Cause.
If both concern the same reality, their descriptions should eventually meet.
The concept of the state may represent precisely such a meeting point.
12. Why Complexity Can Hide Simplicity
There is a peculiar tendency in modern thought to associate complexity with intellectual depth.
If something is difficult to understand, it is often assumed to be profound.
If something is simple, it is easily dismissed.
But nature has no obligation to conform to this prejudice.
Suppose we were given only the output of an unknown machine.
We could collect millions of measurements and construct increasingly sophisticated mathematics describing its behaviour.
Eventually, we might predict its output with extraordinary precision.
Our mathematical description could be enormously complicated.
Then somebody opens the machine.
The principle driving it may turn out to be astonishingly simple.
The mathematics was not necessarily wrong.
It described the result.
But understanding the Cause changed the nature of the explanation.
The same possibility must be allowed for reality.
Quantum mechanics may describe extraordinarily complex manifestations of physical reality while the causal principles beneath them remain simple.
13. The Simplicity of Awareness
The question of Awareness is often made unnecessarily complicated because it begins at the wrong point.
If we begin with matter and assume that matter is fundamentally unaware, we must eventually explain how Awareness mysteriously emerges from it.
The problem appears almost impossible.
But if we begin from Awareness as Cause, the apparent paradox disappears.
Not: non-Awareness to Awareness
But: Awareness to physical reality to increasingly capable expression of Awareness
The mystery changes completely.
The question is no longer:
How did dead matter become aware?
It becomes:
How does physical organization develop the sensory and intelligent capacity through which universal Awareness can increasingly express itself?
That is not merely a philosophical distinction.
It suggests an entirely different direction for scientific investigation.
14. The Stone and the Living Individual
A simple comparison illustrates the principle.
Consider a stone.
The stone belongs to physical reality arising from the substrate and ultimately from Awareness.
But it has no senses and zero intelligence.
Therefore:
Expression of Awareness = 0
Now consider a simple living organism.
It can detect some aspect of its environment.
A channel exists.
Therefore Awareness obtains a limited means of expression.
As sensory capability and intelligence increase, that expression becomes richer.
Eventually we encounter organisms capable of perception, memory, choice, learning, anticipation and emotional relationships.
At still greater levels, we encounter abstract reasoning and self-awareness.
Stone: no senses, zero intelligence, zero expression.
Elementary Life: elementary sensing, elementary intelligence, elementary expression.
Complex Life: multiple senses, greater information processing, greater expression.
Highly Intelligent Life: integrated perception, memory, reasoning, abstraction and complex expression.
Self-Aware Intelligence: Awareness capable of recognizing and examining its own existence.
The quantity of fundamental Awareness has never changed.
Only its expression has.
15. Identity and Intelligence Must Not Be Confused
Identity is independent of intelligence.
A less intelligent living individual is not less of an individual.
Its Identity is no less unique because its capacity for expressing Awareness is limited.
Identity: which individual.
Intelligence: capacity for processing sensory information.
Expression of Awareness: what Awareness can manifest through that capacity.
This means that two individuals with radically different intelligence remain equally distinct Identities.
Intelligence determines neither their uniqueness nor the existence of universal Awareness.
It determines the richness of the available channel of expression.
16. The Brain
The same framework changes the interpretation of the brain.
The brain does not need to manufacture Awareness.
It provides an extraordinarily sophisticated structure for receiving sensory information, integrating it, storing it, comparing it, interpreting it and producing responses.
It is therefore a powerful mechanism for the expression of Awareness.
This also explains why changes to the brain can radically change conscious experience without demonstrating that the brain created Awareness itself.
Damage the sensory or processing mechanism and the expression changes.
Destroy the mechanism and that particular form of expression disappears.
But neither observation establishes that universal Awareness itself has been destroyed.
The mechanism of expression is not necessarily the source of what is expressed.
17. Death
This brings us naturally to death.
When a living organism dies, its organized sensory and intelligent mechanisms cease functioning.
The physical system through which Awareness was expressed as that individual can no longer perform that function.
Therefore the individual's living expression of Awareness terminates.
But Awareness itself cannot be said to have died within this theory.
Awareness preceded the individual.
It preceded life.
It preceded matter.
It preceded the substrate.
It is the Cause.
The unresolved question concerns Identity.
If a particular individual state is A(i), what happens to Identity I(i) when the living physical organization supporting that state ceases?
Does Identity terminate?
Does it persist?
Does it enter another state?
Does it become unresolved?
These are separate questions.
The theory should not answer them without grounds.
But it allows the question to be formulated correctly.
Death is not fundamentally the problem of what happens to Awareness.
It is the problem of what happens to Identity.
18. The Complete Causal Structure
AWARENESS / CAUSE
to
SUBSTRATE
to
PHYSICAL REALITY
to
MATTER AND ORGANIZATION
to
IDENTITY
to
LIFE
to
SENSES
to
INTELLIGENCE
to
INCREASING EXPRESSION OF AWARENESS
to
SELF-AWARENESS
Within this hierarchy:
Awareness is universal.
Identity is individual.
Senses provide access to information.
Intelligence processes that information.
Expression of Awareness increases with the capability of the living system.
The individual is therefore not the creator of Awareness.
Nor is life the creator of Awareness.
The individual is a unique state within a reality whose Cause was Awareness from the beginning.
Conclusion
The central proposition can now be stated precisely:
Each living individual is a unique quantum state of universal Awareness, distinguished by Identity and expressing Awareness according to its sensory and intelligent capacity.
This proposition is not derived from conventional quantum mechanics.
Quantum mechanics arose principally from observed results and developed mathematical states capable of describing and predicting those results.
The present theory begins from the opposite end:
Awareness to Substrate to Physical Reality to Identity to Life to Senses to Intelligence to Expression
Awareness therefore does not suddenly appear when life becomes sufficiently complicated.
It was never absent.
A particle belongs to a reality arising from Awareness.
A stone belongs to that same reality but possesses no sensory or intelligent mechanism through which Awareness can express itself.
Life introduces sensing.
Increasing intelligence expands the channel.
Eventually Awareness becomes capable, through sufficiently intelligent individuals, of examining reality - and ultimately of examining itself.
The progression is therefore not:
Matter to Life to Awareness
It is:
Awareness to Reality to Life to Expression of Awareness
This reduces an apparently profound mystery to a simple causal principle.
Awareness is one.
Identities are countless.
Senses open the channel.
Intelligence expands its capacity.
And through countless living individuals, Awareness expresses itself in countless ways.