How does life proceed?

 

You don't deal with terms such as birth and conception with the Sliver Model. Instead, you regard the beginning of life, evolution, and the development of consciousness in another light. Begin by examining the nature of particles, or pixels if you prefer.

Every atom, ion, and subatomic particle is 'conscious of' every other particle by virtue of mass, charge, and relative distance. That's my simplistic understanding. In addition, localized groupings of these particles (such as molecules and carbon chain arrangements) share overall qualities too. From the inorganic up to the organic, there's an overall consciousness of every structure also. Consider the functionality of proteins (with their primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary ways of behaving), enzymes, DNA, viruses, and cells. 

My idea is that this 'group consciousness' has no size limit and that any material conglomerate has an associated with overall consciousness. Even the entire universe-sized sliver. Perhaps there is a set of slivers identical in every way except that each has a different place where the overall consciousness exudes.

But in terms of a life-entity proceeding, the consciousness would exude through or from a set of slivers from the identical position. Then the rest of the sliver would vary. Now, flip through an adjoining set of slivers in an entropy-decreasing direction while following the physical rules of that universe (conservation of mass, reaction/opposite reaction etc) and there you have how life proceeds.

What is death?

 

Death is a dead end. It's an edge or an outline. It's the point beyond which you can't go.

In each set of linked slivers, there's one sliver that could be thought of as death.

Actually, though, there's no such thing. You cannot subjectively perceive death. It may only objectively be observed by or for others.

Death is but the loss of equilibrium.

Begin with the concept of the art gallery at the centre of the universe. To those of us living, most of the objects on display are simply gibberish. They consist of white noise (to our ears at least). They do no make sense. But that's only according to our bias. As living beings, we expect to see life go on in a steady state of equilibrium. We are prejudiced in the way that we view our living world.

When slivers flow according to the laws that support the world as we know it, then we are content. Living within the boundaries of those rules, we thrive.

Other sliver combinations make no sense to us. They lead us nowhere.

However, anything can happen. Everything does, in fact, happen (it already has). Or, to put it differently, so that we don't invoke a sense of time, everything that could exist does.

From this instant, everything that could happen to you has already occurred. Those possible futures all exist. You could be dead the very next instant according to an infinite variety of aneurysms, accidents, crimes, and karmas. There are probably more ways for you to die at any instant than there are ways to continue living. But here's the trick: you are not aware of them. You cannot be aware of them, because in those states of death you are not who you would have to be so as to be self-aware of that condition!

And so you continue, one knife-edged future (out of a multitude) after another, unaware of having narrowly escaped any number of deaths. You are also unaware of the multiplicity of other pathways that you could have taken.

What is memory?

 

Memory and change work together to conjure up the illusion of time. Without one or the other, that could not happen. 

Memory is also required to establish a sense of self or identity.

Memory is an awareness of a set of slivers thermodynamically upstream (i.e. in the past) that lead up to the present. That set of slivers that obeys the natural laws that define it. The awareness referred to involves the 'consciousness centre'. The consciousness of each sliver 'recognizes' the other centres in that set. It identifies as them. They identify themselves as one.

The present sliver has a relationship/link/connection to those slivers it recognizes as itself. Furthermore, it senses the degree of separation or the entropic distance that separates them. The greater the separation, the further back in time one's memory seems to reach.

What is thought?

 

Think for a minute. What is thought? What is thinking for?

I think that thought is a change of awareness, perception, or wisdom. It is B minus A: the difference between two states of awareness in different slivers (within an identity stream). It is a consciousness differential.

Now, consciousness is centralized about a nexus. And so, when you compare two elements of a connected set, a thought represents the journey downstream from higher to lower of awareness.

Thought accompanies this stream. It may seem to be predetermined, but that is only when you focus on one stream. A thought is both the driving force and the result. It follows AND precedes. A thought determines which future stream you take, but it also describes it. Thought veers your course. It accompanies what happens. Could regard it as the wake of a ship.

The future isn't cast in stone. Thought helps you to take a direction.

How do consciousness and concentration differ?

 

Let consciousness be the 'neutral' condition. Then concentration would be non-neutral, or active. It is that state of consciousness that has a focus. And specifically, it is focus-with-intent. 

To my mind, concentration is that focus of mind we adopt whenever we wish to effect either an action or a state of being. And since there is no time (or space) we should not think of this as a 'doing'. Rather, it is an active choice or willingness to choose a particular direction.

So concentration is that state of being that concerns itself with which sliver pathways one wishes to aim for.

What are planning and premonition?

 

You are planning when you envisage a future and then work backward from that point to identify a possible series of steps that would lead up to it. In sliver language, the link or bond is such that it enables the current consciousness to imagine that, or those, future(s). Imagination or maybe visualization 'names' the bond.

Premonition is a stronger bond. Again, it is a type of imagination/visualization, with the additional sense of proximity. You are conscious of a greater likelihood.

Is free will actual?

 

Yes and no, to the question of whether we have free will. 

I don't believe that we have free will in the sense of selecting into actuality the one path that is to be forever (from the gallery of all possible permutations). It is not a question of one thing only existing, with everything else non-actualized, for the reason that all possible futures exist. Free will is just our choosing what we wish to focus on. 

I would say that free will resembles more of a neural flash within the brain. The whole pathway seems to light up at once. It is instantaneous.

Does the lightning bolt choose its path as it goes?

The expression: 'We all choose our own reality' is probably nearer to the truth, in my opinion. Therefore, free will is also an individual thing. I doubt that we co-create.

What occurs when things happen?

 

The distinction between willing something and acting it out is very fine. When you will to bring about some desired future event, your centre of consciousness focuses itself downstream, bringing into awareness that path of slivers that links the two. But nothing actually 'happens'. You don't actually create something that wasn't there. You merely bring into relief one of many possibilities that is already there.

It's as if you are the pilot of a glider taking action to veer her craft so as to optimize and prolong the ride. It's self-perpetuation, basically. 

Actions operate to maintain the equilibrium of the conscious state. They operate to keep the consciousness vehicle in good condition to the fullest extent possible. There would seem to be a strong parallel between the equilibrium associated with the sliver model and that of the atomic model with respect to chemical reactions. Maybe.

But in any case, 'doing' and 'being' aren't markedly different in nature.

Is it action we take when we take it?

 

Being and doing are more or less the same creature. We believe that we act when in fact all that we do is 'lean' in our preferred direction. We 'activate' that chain of slivers corresponding to our preferred future, nothing more. (It's a 'greener' state of consciousness that we always seek on the other side.)

I don't think that we conflate 'doing' and 'being'. They are actually two sides of the same coin. Whether we think in terms of one or the other depends on the paradigm of reality our awareness occupies.

Are we in control?

 

Are we in control?

So

What is the significance of childhood?

 

What are growth and aging?

What happens when we sleep?

 

What are dreams?

What happens when we meditate?

What's the narrative of the Sliver Model?

 

We'll use the monkey-typed book analogy here.

What is a story? It is a narrative of something that could happen. We are used to seeing in in the form of a book, with the features of that format. A book has a structure. There's usually a beginning, middle, and end. A book, or novel, has conventions. It is written in a particular language with the alphabet, spelling, and grammar of that language. 

Of all the stories you'd write, only some would manage to follow all of the rules. The vocabulary is correct, as is the spelling and meaning. The sentences are grammatically correct, and they have individual meaning. The meta-meaning makes sense. The plot has a form. The characters are well-integrated. They feel and act according to their character.

I see all stories starting at one point: the entropic beginning, or an anti-black hole. From that point, that sliver, they radiate outward. Their final point must be somewhere on a sphere of zero entropy.

Imagine the situation. You have your gallery (proofs?) of all monkey-generated arrangements. From those, you cull all of the gibberish. What is left are the sliver chains that reach from the midpoint to the edge. They are all possible narratives. 

And just as a book exists as one item (although the pages may be numbered) there's no time to it. The whole story exists. You may experience it as an unfolding occurrence, but in reality, the pages don't actually have to turn.

 

Do we share a history?

 

I have vacillated between two notions: one that there is only one consciousness centre per sliver, and that the apparent coexistence of conscious beings is a trick or an illusion due to some sort of an interweaving of sliver sets. The other is that multiple localized consciousness centres may exist inside a single sliver.

I tend to regard the second option as more likely. Reason being, different charged and massed particles appear to exist simultaneously, each influencing and being influenced by many others at once (like stars in the sky).

But one thing is for sure, that every individual sliver can only have been arrived at via one unique pathway. There is no way that paths may coincidentally converge when there is an infinite number of possible differences between one sliver and the 'next'.

Who am I?

A linked set of slivers. That is who I think I am. My identity, in short, is a very close association between a certain set of slivers. My life is those slivers flipped through. That centre of consciousness issues forth like a stream.

I am a stream of consciousness. That stream is a set of slivers connected, not across time, but as a series. I'm a subset of the superset of possible permutations.

My set of slivers has certain attributes. Their centres of consciousness connect to such an extent that they identify as each other. (They are really, really close, in other words.) They are focused - or they focus - upon my physical body (although that body has no boundaries; it extends throughout the universe that I find myself occupying). The slivers are linked linearly so that each perceives itself a certain 'distance' from each other. (The greater the distance, the greater the interval.) This knowledge of other, analogous to the inverse square electrical attraction/repulsion between charged particles, is what memory is about.

Each sliver senses other slivers in one direction only. It is unaware of the slivers in the other direction. Therefore, I possess a memory of my so-called past, but I don't have a memory of the future. I exist altogether, at once. There's the illusion that I live in time, but that's all that it is - an illusion.

My consciousness has depth. It has its own nature. The degree - and maybe direction - to which my consciousness is able to focus defines my nature, species, intelligence, and who knows what else.

I see myself navigate through a cloud of largely transparent possible next-instant ghostly holograms that indicate my next possible moves. All stories that include me are laid out before me.

Consider a centre of consciousness self-identifying across a set of slivers.

Who is Pete Townshend?

Who is Pete Townshend? (or anyone, really)

The question of the existence of other beings in a universe where all is supposed to be one is a gnarly one. How do other people - if they are not all figments of my imagination - fit it?

Let's pick on Pete, Pete Townshend. He is far enough removed from me, my family, friends, and aquaintances. I've heard of the man. I've seen footage of him being interviewed. I've listened to his music. But I've never actually met the man and shaken his had, let alone been inside his mind. It's conceivable that he isn't real.

But I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I'm going to go with the notion that Pete is like me. He too must be is a set of slivers, linearly arranged. He is made of the same stuff, but is mostly a separate being. There does not exist the relationship beween his slivers and mine of the type that his all share with each other, and mine all share with each other. I'm tending toward a minor analogy: that we are two suits of slivers in a shuffled deck of playing cards.

Although we are separate, there is some form of relationship - a weaker one. Our two sets, both part of the superset, do intersect, as it were. We would truly be separate sets if I had never heard of the man, listened to his music, heard stories in the news about his activities, spoken with others about him, or read his autobiography.

So I am going to suggest that to the degree to which you know about another being, share the person's space and historicity, communicate, and form relationships - there are connections or bonds between their slivers set and yours.

Who are you?

The Lovers - Rene Magritte

Now that we've dealt with Pete, it's time to deal with you.

Who are you? Pete sang it (or maybe Roger). I'm asking it. . . . And you are reading it!

The way around the conundrum of dealing with the seeming multiplicity of separate beings within an all-is-one universe is to think of us all as just one consciousness superset. What you might do is imagine the centre of consciousness flitting from one locality, or focal point, to another, depending on the makeup of the whole.

So certain arrangements of pixels give rise to different centres of consciousness, as many, perhaps, as there are pixels.

You are you, but you could just as easily have been Hitler. If you'd been born in his place, with the same parents, circumstances, genes and the like, things would have turned out much the same. In fact, you are him, Pete, me and everyone else. We're just different subsets of slivers, loosely connected as evidenced by the fact that we know each other's name, have seen each other's photos, and have read what was we wrote, or was written about us. Well, maybe not Mein Kampf - I've heard that it's fairly heavy-going.

Are humans special?

 

According to the late, great Alan Watts, every creature sees itself as human.

One of the first things which everybody should understand. Is that every creature in the universe that is in any way sensitive and in any manner of speaking conscious regards itself as a human being. That is to say. It knows and is aware of a hierarchy of beings above it and a hierarchy of beings below it. If you take such a tiny creature as a fruit fly which lives only a few days. It is aware of all sorts of weird little animals and objects and spores floating in the atmosphere which we don’t even notice unless we’ve got a microscope around [which] very few people have. And it criticizes them as being inferior animals and all that sort of thing whereas human beings are things that it doesn’t comprehend and that it is as much outside its. Intellect as a question is outside ours. And we see these far off objects floating in the heavens and we have only the vaguest idea of what they may be actually we may all be some kind of. Atoms within the hair on somebody’s nose. In another dimension, and all these galaxies being the constituent elements who knows? But there is, I think, a fundamental principle that everybody must understand in order to know what is the meaning of the Tao, or the Chinese sense of the course of nature and that is the principle of relativity. It’s absolutely fundamental to an understanding of Taoist philosophy of relativity. That is to say that wherever you are, and whoever you are and whatever. But you are you’re in the middle. You know pig-in-the-middle, that’s the game. And you have you see just in the same way as when you stand say on the deck of a ship and you can see a horizon all around you to exactly the same distance you’re in the center of a circle because your senses extend a certain direction in all directions and therefore give you the impression of being in the middle. Everything in the world feels like that, and also it has its own kind which look natural to it you see spiders and hydras, and sea urchins and so on don’t look very natural to us. We say well, I wouldn’t want to look like that. But they say when they see us, "Well what kind of an awful thing is that and what a lot of nonsense it does." You see if your dog watches you when your typewriting. Look at you and…Human beings, especially cats. Dogs are dogs have tried to catch on to human beings in a sort of a funny way, but cats look at you and think you are out of your mind You’re absolutely crazy what do you sit there all day feverishly pecking away at a typewriter, sa,y or doing something busy like that when you could sit on the carpet and and purr. You just, from the cats, cats point of view you don’t understand what life’s about all. But all cats  in cat company they feel that they are people. Because the definition of a person is where you look from. 

What about God, then?

 

We are conscious. Within us live countless microbial creatures, each of which, presumably, is associated with its own centre of consciousness. Yet up 'above' we are unaware of them.

And so a 'higher' state of consciousness may not be high enough to qualify as God, or even a god. Do we know about the lives of trees, of continents? The scale may be too wrong - both that of span and of size.

There may well be a largest consciousness centre, but if the universe is limited then so is it.

What's the difference between good and evil?

 

My ideas on this are not fully-formed, but it is likely that this subject has to do with freedom. 'Good'  means not getting in another's way. 'Bad' means blocking. So it boils down to autonomy. Judicious, responsible, and reflective autonomy.

From a sliver, a centre of consciousness has a variety of other slivers to which it links. To some degree, it can choose a path to focus on. But other centres have their own preferences. And all consciousness centres are not able to select those paths completely independently - that's how it seems to me.

And so the less interference and impedance to others that you generate by your choices, the better. Don't get in each other's way, as much as you can help.

What is the meaning of life?

We ask questions about meaning when dealing with symbols. Symbols stand not for themselves, but for other things, so it is necessary to ask what they mean. A language uses words to represent things and ideas. If you express yourself through language, you need to explain what you mean as you go.

But a thing on its own requires no explanation. It is what it is. It doesn't need to explain itself. It is, in fact, meaningless to ask what it means.

What is the purpose of life?

 

Although the question is phrased in the present, it points toward the future. Its focus presupposes that the future is somehow more important or significant than the present, or past. That 'all good things come to those who wait'. That it is worth putting up with, or enduring the current situation in the hope that it will all come right, even if that future occurs after death, or that the good occurs to your descendants or countrymen. You sacrifice the now for the later, or hereafter.

But all slivers are equal, irrespective of their entropic status. It makes no sense to elevate the so-called future. According to the sliver model, there's nothing you move or work toward. Every outcome already exists, so you need to strive to bring about something that otherwise mightn't.

The purpose of life is to be what it is and to do what it does.

As for your being, the only thing is to be yourself. That implies being genuine. That implies being authentic. And that requires autonomy.

What's our mission?

 

Whoah there! Leave me out of it. You may grab yourself a mission, but I want nothing to do with it. Don't call it "ours". I'm not part of your team.

A mission gives the idea of something important to do. something important to achieve. Well, that is a matter of opinion. What is important for one is unimportant for another.

For me, as long as I am able to live life the way I want, that's all that I want really. There's nothing permanently fixed in my sights. The objective changes according to whim. I guess, to live as if I'm a living artwork.

But in terms of a shared mission? No. There's no shared drum. We see things from our own perspectives. We're not ants. (Even ants may not be ants.)

What does Sliver Theory say about religion?

 

I understand why people have religions. They want to know about their situation. They want to understand what it's all about. They know intuitively that there's more to reality than what their senses suggest.

Religions are an example of that drive. Religions utilize the tool of narrative; it is a powerful means of remembering, understanding, and fabricating. But most religions are not very imaginative; they borrow heavily from one another, and they default to the authoritarian and hierarchy. They work tolerably well in that their rigidity that does not allow their adherents to question their dogma. Thereby, they give their believers a certain security and structure. But their 'teachings' are vague. We do not know which parts of them ought to be taken literally, and which parts are not. And people of one religion susceptible to feel threatened by other religions, or questioning systems such as Science.

Science used to be quite useful in a global sort of sense. It did or does fall down a little in terms of it core belief in understanding the whole by breaking it up into its component bits. But over time it has become to large and unwieldy. One cannot easily to attain a good general scientific education.

There's logic, which works well in certain realms. 

There's experience.

There's philosophy.

But overall I'm going to run with my Sliver Theory. 

How about that Big Bang?

 

There are two ways that I like to regard the Big Bang. The first is by way of consciousness. The second is by way of structure.

So what (does all of this suggest)?

 

Given the above, how does it affect things? What's the metaphysics of it? The reason I ask is that if it didn't have any real-world practical application then Sliver Theory wouldn't be worth its salt. So what I'll do is go through the blog, edit as I go, and jump back and forth (to this last section) as discussion points come to mind. I'll post paragraphs as they suggest themselves.

Unfavorable outcome sensitization. Too aware of the downstream sliver sets with poor results. Say the norm is 95%. And that it is possible to reduce that to 96, 97, or even 98% Thereby saving yourself 10, 20, or 30. But that you use 50 in the effort, for a net overall loss. 

I'm frightened of imperfection. But by definition, the state of perfection is a single sliver. Every other state is therefore imperfect. SO anything you can do at any 'time' is to make a move in roughly the right direction.

I feel that equanimity is a worthwhile life goal. How could that be explained using Sliver Theory?

Given this consciousness vehicle, what can I be?

Thought arises FROM chance. It is a result of it. As for thchange, it cannot be a time thing. Therefore being IS doing.

Acting in the zone I believe is when you proceed from the position that you are the entire universe, not an isolated bit struggling against other bits.

From meditation, I get that we try to remain still. But there is also a drive to be in motion. BOTH are fine; we shouldn't fight against moving. These two drives are in dynamic tension. It's like riding a surfboard, riding a bicycle, driving a car. 

Also , the vector idea describes what we are able to achieve. We have free will to act, but the sliver has a 'lean' in a direction, and the influence of that needs factoring in i.e. the 3 + 4 + 5 right-agle triangle thing.

Before I forget:

Think of a sliver as a rectangle. It will have a centre of consciousness. That COC will want to 'grow' i.e. increase its consciousness. That will cause it to be attracted to slivers with an increased COC. But also will be acting pulls from gravity, thermodynamics etc. They act together with the COC growth direction to produce a vector. 3,4,5 triangle. Now, COC 'growth' has two components. It wishes simulataneous ly to be calm and stable. At the same time it wishes to have experience. The combined result is a pull toward movement with stability as with riding a surfbpard.

Data/evidence to suggest: Assming that centres of consciousness tend to travel in the same universe, it should be possibel to statistically fidetermnge the average absolute difference in year of death, comparing people who remain married and those who divorced.

Why assume that there is only a singl copy of every sliver (if atoms are all identical)? Also, there must be multiple centres of consciousness within a sliver, cause otherwise how could they connect/communicate/have a relationship? (SInce there is no intersection between slivers)

What is reality?

 Lightning flash within the cloud. Intersecting/co-residing. Activated path within the cloud of possibility. We never die in our own stream. We each are our own universe. Others may share it for a spell.

What is the present?

 The sensation of 'now' arises through consciousness, but I don't believe that either now or consciousness reside within a single sliver. You need a series of slivers to generate both.

• Now is a construct of that consciousness
• There is no Now independent of consciousness
• It's Now when consciousness comes to a standstill
• When consciousness 'moves', there cannot be a Now
• Now, as it is perceived, may be spread across a series of slivers