Computer science metaphors for the spiritual

[Asolsutsesvyl]

Since my teens, I've played around with computer science-related metaphors for the spiritual. Thoughts related to the Ra material cosmology have become linked to more elaborate, and less playful, attempts of that kind.

But all my metaphors of this kind are still quite vague. Comparably vague to the more popular "quantum mechanics" metaphors familiar in New Age circles.

Here's a "part 1" - there's a whole bunch of other, related thinking I could also write about.

Information, data and code

A basic idea is that of a unified information structure of the cosmos. What would it consist of?

The oldest metaphors I've played around with concern data structures and how memory is handled in computer programs. The memory of a computer is one large area, within which smaller areas end up used for different things.

What is the meaning of a series of bytes (a byte being 8 binary bits)? It completely depends on the code which does something with them. And the code is also a series of bytes. All code is data. All data can also potentially be used as code. The most striking case of this is "self-modifying code", in which a program treats its own code as data which is dynamically modified.

Consciousness may be deeply linked to structured information. Perhaps there is some type of objective criteria for the characteristics of an information structure which becomes self-aware. But the most sophisticated self-modifying programs which run on computers, which behave in all the ways characteristic of organisms, tend to be viruses; in practice, their complexity may approach that of bacteria, and way more may be needed before consciousness appears.

Pointers and memory addressing

How is memory accessed? Not only through static addresses to "locations", but also through pointers, which are variables which hold memory addresses. There are pointers to data, pointers to pointers to data, pointers to pointers to pointers to data, etc.; however many layers end up being used in practice. Each pointer can change, and arithmetic can be used in connection with them; it is called "pointer arithmetic".

Programs typically handle several instances of the same thing in a uniform way. Thus, there are data structures, groupings of things which are stored and read in memory in a standard way - standard for the code using them.

Metaphorically, it is tempting to view consciousnesses of a "type" as analogous to an intricate structure of smaller data structures. The interconnectedness of minds at a different level, and possibilities of non-physical interaction, would correspond to them all existing within a much larger system.

Beings psychically affecting the "contents" of one another would mean that part of the data of a being is open to writing by other beings. Beings can get the "address" of such data in other beings, and "black magic" becomes a case of one or more beings damaging one or more beings by overwriting something.

Psychic reading, of people or of other things, turns into the reading of data structures outside one's own being in a more direct or "raw" way than that offered by the interface of the physical senses.

Growth from 3D to 4D may be likened to a metamorphosis in which a little system rewrites itself so as to change into a little system of a functionally different kind. Or, to put it a little differently, alchemy as "bootstrapping", when an older version of a system is used to build a new version which then replaces the old.

The singularity

The emergence of a hyper-intelligent artificial intelligence from smaller things joining into a great new mind is easy to relate, metaphorically, to the emergence of a social memory complex from the consciousnesses of a society.

Alternatively, smaller systems which appear supernatural in their capabilities compared to human consciousness and its limits of comprehension, could be compared to the types of consciousness in-between 3D and 6D STO in "size". (That is, 4D-5D STO and 4D-6D STS.) The 6D STO mind, the product of a type of "fusion", would then be the result of the ultimate singularity at a higher level. Patterns may repeat.

[Strannik]

To understand our universe, you should look at it from the point of view of the generative adversarial neural network.

[Asolsutsesvyl]

To understand our universe, you should look at it from the point of view of the generative adversarial neural network.

In a very general sense, that brings to mind the twin tendencies of the growth of illusion, and the growth of consciousness which penetrates the illusion. That's like the principle of the GAN: one system falsifies, one system tries to detect the falseness, and the ultimate result is the "illusion" which is "real enough" to withstand the test. That's like what the logos produces, following experiments, in order for a vivid and variegated learning experience to be possible.

In the cosmos, there's also the repeating patterns of smaller-scale illusions produced by smaller systems, existing within larger scopes or systems. There's more local and more universal ways of considering it.


I'm also reminded of something more specific, which has more to do with the activity of higher-density manipulators. Their capabilities can be roughly imagined by analogy with technical systems.

A book, The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts, by Joe Fisher, in large part focuses on experience with a channeling group, where a variety of spirit guides came through a medium in trance. The guides had human identities and claimed historical backgrounds, from ancient Greece to the trenches of the first World War, and others.

The details which were provided as interaction and bonding with those personas proceeded matched the historical settings, when Fisher later researched the characters in detail. But the persons themselves had never existed on Earth; they were like portraits of people who could easily have been there, but never were.

New characters were produced when the channeled "source" felt that something new would better match the preferences of a participant. When one "guide" was tired of, a new character was introduced as a replacement, with a new faked background and simulated personality.

A trick used by the deceptive source early on was to classify people into two kinds of souls, one much less developed than the other, reducing the group to the "better souls" who had been judged the best targets for the manipulation. One of those excluded, a man learned in esoteric matters, helped Fisher see through the deception when, after a time of having been taken for a ride by the "guide" assigned to him to the detriment of his personal life, he distanced himself.

Fisher is also a tragic case of someone who, having investigated matters of otherwordly manipulators, was driven to suicide not long after writing that final book. Shortly before jumping off a cliff, he claimed that the spirits were still after him. Perhaps the entity or entities did not appreciate a light being shone on their nature.

[flofrog]

perhaps it might be interesting to read the books of Alberto Villoldo...

[Asolsutsesvyl]

perhaps it might be interesting to read the books of Alberto Villoldo...

I read some of them, a few years ago. (My mother used to be into his shamanic teaching, but then parted ways after the group became submerged in psychic warfare with some other group and some became ill. But that was in the late 00's. She gave up shamanic practice in the years after.)

While a variety of things come to mind in relation to the whole general area of shamanic thought, there's no one big theme I can think of.

But one detail from Villoldo's personal journey struck me. When he was on an Ayahuasca trip, he experienced himself flying through a Universe of interconnected points, representing possible realities which came towards him and then moved away, rapidly, with a mystical vision of a universal deity behind the veil of it all then entering the picture. Roughly, that's a summary from memory.

It reminded me of my own thinking from a year or two before reading the book, about timelines and the structure of reality. I envisioned movement through time as graph traversal, i.e. navigating a structure of points and lines, where from each point, there may be one or more lines giving options for the next point to be reached.

We experience movement through time as one-dimensional, but various mystical thinkers, e.g. P.D. Ouspensky a century ago, describe multi-dimensional time, the limitation of human perception making it seem one-dimensional.

Ouspensky thought that time is three-dimensional, just like space, and that for "higher-dimensional beings", one or more dimensions we consider to be of time may be of space instead. It is the limitations of a being's awareness, according to Ouspensky, which result in time being perceived. His thought experiments describe how, for animals, one or more dimensions of our 3D space may seem like they belong to time, space seeming either 2D (for other mammals lacking human "depth" concepts) or 1D (e.g. for a snail moving through a landscape, unaware of how it turns direction).

Ouspensky was very much into the late 19th century and early 20th century thinking about a fourth dimension of space, but went further. He speculated about how the incomplete nature of human consciousness made a fourth dimension of space seem like a third dimension of time.

The dimensions of time, according to Ouspensky, are:
1. The "line of time" (which some modern channeled sources claim is characteristic of 3D beings and becomes part of space in 4D).
2. The range of possibilities; we navigate it with little awareness, just like a snail navigates to the left and the right with no idea of the bigger landscape surrounding it.
3. The time-space of eternal repetition, in which all possible variations of developments play out.

I think Ouspensky's framework is interesting in relation to Ra's presentation. The dimension of time which remains at the 6D level may be #3 above; 6D STO may have moved beyond the line of time and the range of possibilities, but "waits" in active participation until the full range of possible developments - the infinity of the current creation's possibilities - play out towards the reaching of unity. Then 6D can move on, without any division, into 7D, consciousness merging back fully into unity as part of a grand synchronization in the last dimension of time.

The "graph traversal" metaphor for movement through time represents two dimensions, the line-of-time and the range-of-possibilities, in a 2D structure. The third, called "eternity", corresponds to all the different possibilities for how the traversal could have been done.

It becomes even more interesting if the graph is not fully defined in advance. Think of a computer program which constructs a graph dynamically, in accordance with the current state of things. From time to time the graph is extended, or connections added between points when it is determined how they are related. How the graph ultimately looks may then be unique for each unique traversal.

[Asolsutsesvyl]

Semi-related and on a humorous note, I also wrote an Illogicopedia article about timeline and reality management with 'git', the version control system used by software developers. It's easy to extend it metaphorically from contents on a computer to the fabric of reality.

[flofrog]

Ouspensky was very much into the late 19th century and early 20th century thinking about a fourth dimension of space, but went further. He speculated about how the incomplete nature of human consciousness made a fourth dimension of space seem like a third dimension of time.

hmmm... how interesting Asolsutsesvyl.. this now puts a new light on something that happened to me about eighteen years ago. I am driving a beetle and in it are my 14 years old son and two of his friends. We are arriving at a main crossing and the light is green for us, I am driving about 20 miles an hour not fast and suddenly as I am crossing the first cross walk I see as in a dream a car red light passing in front of us. My whole being says NO and I step on the gas and fly back crossing the large avenue and as I look on my left I see a car careeening through, and just as I drive over the second crosswalk across the large avenue, I feel my back bumper slightly brushed by.
I remember stopping there, walking out and seeing a brush of paint off my back bumper and a pedestrian approaching and saying was that a crazy guy coming through.
My son told me later he didn't hear me saying anything, just taking a deep breath as he felt our beetle surging forward. So, when I read your post, it feels like this was getting into a time traversal. Thoughts ?

[Asolsutsesvyl]

(Emphasis added.)

hmmm... how interesting Asolsutsesvyl.. this now puts a new light on something that happened to me about eighteen years ago. I am driving a beetle and in it are my 14 years old son and two of his friends. We are arriving at a main crossing and the light is green for us, I am driving about 20 miles an hour not fast and suddenly as I am crossing the first cross walk I see as in a dream a car red light passing in front of us. My whole being says NO and I step on the gas and fly back crossing the large avenue and as I look on my left I see a car careeening through, and just as I drive over the second crosswalk across the large avenue, I feel my back bumper slightly brushed by.
I remember stopping there, walking out and seeing a brush of paint off my back bumper and a pedestrian approaching and saying was that a crazy guy coming through.
My son told me later he didn't hear me saying anything, just taking a deep breath as he felt our beetle surging forward. So, when I read your post, it feels like this was getting into a time traversal. Thoughts ?

In conventional terms, it sounds like a flash of psychic foreknowledge and then action which follows this message from another part of the self.

In terms of my metaphor, there is always traversal of or in time as life proceeds, since time always keeps "going on". But it seems that consciousness can sometimes be in several places or times at the same time. And so, part of the self may be able to inform another part about going somewhere or avoiding something.

As in, part of the self explores a possible future, then reaches back and gives the incarnate self a sharp nudge so that it changes direction. The current track forward led to a bad outcome, so there was a backtracking and making sure to follow another route instead.

When souls "plan" life, then in order to be able to plan better than we can do at this level, more must be seen. Ra describes it in terms of a parallel "time/space" existence, where a multidimensional view of time is explored. This makes "backtracking" seem less like time travel and more like simply having foresight.

A person's time/space self may have an easier time or a harder time directing the incarnate self, depending on how psychic the incarnate self is. But I don't really feel I have a clear picture of how all that stuff may work. I think it may become much more easy and reliable for people with a 4D presence. (Ouspensky is interesting in that regard; it's documented how he often foresaw his personal future, and sometimes decided to change plans so that "this time, it will be different".) I think that there may be great variation, and also that the higher the densities involved, the more abstract and far-reaching the patterns taken into account in life planning may get.

[Navaratna]

If I were to design a computer simulation to try and portray humans leveling up in the Law of One, like it was some MMORPG, I think points would be increased by things like being around large bodies of water to practice hydromancy. Accumulating jewels as tokens to enhance an individuals ability to amplify luminescence from sunlight, and finding fuel sources such as candles or materials for bonfires to practice pyromancy. Elevating energy and luminescence. Some animals such as cats and spirit hounds such as Xoloitzcuintlis or Egyptian hounds trained to solidify your shadow defense. Different levels of this video game would result in you finding treasure and wisdom from the world's dragons. The Egyptian goddess Mehen, the Naga Kanya, and Quetzalcoatl each offering you their own unique charms such as Quetzalcoatl giving you jade, Mehen giving you ankhs and carnelian or Khepri giving you stone scarabs. Ningiszidda giving you rods of Lapis Lazuli and the wisdom of Inanna. Both Sumerian demigods.

The larger your group would be around these materials, and the more of these resources you stockpiled in to a nexus, the more you could effectively fend off shadow entities, the more your Mana level would rise and give you a greater ability to energize and unfold your groups collective hologram during meditations free of disruption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomic_brain_theory

To cleanse shadow energy in the world you could go out on group raids to haunted mansions, battlefields, tombs, and graveyards bringing with you magnetic stones such as lodestone, incense censers, or ghostbuster cannons studded with brightly shining gemstones. Banishing phantoms by guiding their residual non-physical form back toward where the planets magnetic field wants them to be sent

[flofrog]

(Emphasis added.)

hmmm... how interesting Asolsutsesvyl..   this now puts a new light on something that happened to me about eighteen years ago.  I am driving a beetle and in it are my 14 years old son and two of his friends. We are arriving at a main crossing and the light is green for us, I am driving about 20 miles an hour not fast and suddenly as I am crossing the first cross walk I see as in a dream a car red light passing in front of us. My whole being says NO and I step on the gas and fly back crossing the large avenue and as I look on my left I see a car careeening through, and just as I drive over the second crosswalk across the large avenue, I feel my back bumper slightly brushed by.
I remember stopping there, walking out and seeing a brush of paint off my back bumper and a pedestrian approaching and saying was that a crazy guy coming through.
My son told me later he didn't hear me saying anything, just taking a deep breath as he felt our beetle surging forward.    So, when I read your post,  it feels like this was getting into a time traversal.  Thoughts ?

In conventional terms, it sounds like a flash of psychic foreknowledge and then action which follows this message from another part of the self.

In terms of my metaphor, there is always traversal of or in time as life proceeds, since time always keeps "going on". But it seems that consciousness can sometimes be in several places or times at the same time. And so, part of the self may be able to inform another part about going somewhere or avoiding something.

As in, part of the self explores a possible future, then reaches back and gives the incarnate self a sharp nudge so that it changes direction. The current track forward led to a bad outcome, so there was a backtracking and making sure to follow another route instead.

When souls "plan" life, then in order to be able to plan better than we can do at this level, more must be seen. Ra describes it in terms of a parallel "time/space" existence, where a multidimensional view of time is explored. This makes "backtracking" seem less like time travel and more like simply having foresight.

A person's time/space self may have an easier time or a harder time directing the incarnate self, depending on how psychic the incarnate self is. But I don't really feel I have a clear picture of how all that stuff may work. I think it may become much more easy and reliable for people with a 4D presence. (Ouspensky is interesting in that regard; it's documented how he often foresaw his personal future, and sometimes decided to change plans so that "this time, it will be different".) I think that there may be great variation, and also that the higher the densities involved, the more abstract and far-reaching the patterns taken into account in life planning may get.

Thank you Asolsutsesvyl. It definitely describes what I felt it was, like all this happened in apparent split second but I was sort of very detached and rational checking something I was seeing and deciding this strong No, so in a way a very cool quiet decision despite the apparent speed of time in space/time. Thank you.