I do find myself warming to Tom Campbells ‘theory of everything’; The idea that our reality is a probabilistic system as opposed to a deterministic one.
Our physical bodies become a kind of ‘rendering interface’, something akin to the computer monitor and speakers we have attached to our pc’s. These are devices to ‘make sensible’, to decode and present data.
We can say that the raw data/information is ‘real’ to an extent, but the presented, decoded ‘world’ we receive/ create is less so; It is just a user friendly ‘skin’, displaying some of the information and hiding the rest.
Any part of reality, not crystallised and made firm by one of these ‘rendering interfaces’(ie observed by one of us) remains a probability function.
The old question about whether the tree falling in a forest makes a sound (if there is no one there to observe it), returns an unexpected answer.
The tree does not make a sound; It doesn’t even need to fall!
Reality only needs to decide on its state when one of the ‘players’ happens along and renders the scene. Its state is then fixed; The data of the world has been modified and other ‘players’ will, from then on, also render this updated crystallised data.
To moot such an idea about reality even 100 years ago would have seemed entirely crackpot. New discoveries in quantum physics, however, have shaken our belief in a solid, persistent world; Physicists who study at the very small scale are forced to see it as probabilistic and uncertain, otherwise their calculations do not work.
We have also developed new computer games and models that are proceduraly generated; The ‘game world’ being generated as the player encounters it. The game does not have to decide or compute the scene until that particular part needs to be observed. This takes considerably less computing power than designing an entire persistent world and enables an almost ‘infinite’ world, where the further and deeper one seeks the more one finds.
In our world, It is Campbell’s contention that all actions, thoughts and feelings experienced by the ‘player’, add data to the reality system. Our bodies only process information pertaining to the surface of things though; We are partitioned off from others ‘thought data’ and other ‘higher ruleset’ information dealing with reality maintenance, This would appear necessary for reality to function as ‘intended’.
The western occult tradition has a notion of the ‘astral light’ which is a subtle substance that permeates everything. It is marginally out of phase with our physical world so our bodily senses do not apprehend it, but despite its ethereal description, occultists contend that it is more fundamental than our physical reality; The ‘sphere of its emanation’ is named ‘foundation’.
The magical tradition would have it that we live, breath and have our being within this light and every thought that we have stamps an indelible impression on this substance, Tradition has it that our thoughts and emotions coalesce with one of the creatures on that plane and then passes away from our immediate control, into this pulsating ocean of vitality and feeling to influence others minds for good or for ill.
“Being the vehicle wherein are dynamically recorded the passions and thought impressions of all mankind, the memory of lower nature, and being present on the earth all the time, inasmuch as it is all permeant and but one plane removed from the physical, its contents must influence enormously the minds of weak and sensitive men. Not only the latter, but most of the children on earth are influenced in some way by the currents rippling through its substance.” Israel Regardie
