Think of being in a dark quiet room without walls or gravity or the ability to move your body (total sensory isolation chamber) and only connected to the rest of the world by the internet.
The physicist Thomas Campbell here discussing ‘physical matter realities’ (PMR) and non -‘physical matter’ realities (NPMR)
‘Obviously’ we have found ourselves in a PMR, which Campbell posits is an ideal environment for evolving elementary consciousness:
Before there were PMRs, there were only NPMRs.
As it turns out, NPMR realities are not optimized for evolving basic or elementary consciousness. The problem is the motivation-action-result-feedback loops are long and difficult to define in NPMR because interactions between entities are often tenuous and not steady.
If a sentient entity does not like what is going on in NPMR thought-space, it can drop out and disappear or block out (filter) specific interactions. In NPMR, your external environment is, to a large extent, controlled directly by your mind. Such is the nature of thought-space and thought-form-land: It is tenuous, individual, and quick to change. Doing or action (energy exchanges) comes and goes with focus, is intent driven, and often reversible.
In NPMR, the results and consequences of intent and action were difficult to define and unclear. Responsibility and right intent, the main learning issues, seemed forever debatable. Reconstruction of certain and clear motivation became a slippery and divisive issue among NPMR residents. A reality that was stickier, more solid and obvious — something less tenuous, changeable and camouflageable — was needed to obviate those “Yes I did.” “No you didn’t,” arguments over intent.
A thought experiment to develop perspective:
Think of being in a dark quiet room without walls or gravity or the ability to move your body (total sensory isolation chamber) and only connected to the rest of the world by the internet.
Now imagine you were born in that condition and so was everybody else (many millions) on the internet. What would you and your net friends (and enemies and persons barely known) eventually figure out and do with your time? What would you learn? What would be the objective nature of your reality? Or would it only be subjective. If subjective, how would you know the others were real? How close would that experience compare to walking around and interacting with others physically outside your isolation chamber room? And visa versa?
Would you and the gazillions of others eventually make a big multiplayer game with a rule-set to provide structure that provided goals and challenges and interactive feedback. Wouldn’t that be fun — my how the time would fly then. Would more than one game likely spring up on the net? Could you play more than one game at a time?
Yes, there are identifiable structures in NPMR — but not objects — not physical structures — that is a PMR thing — as is a personal virtual structure (interpretation) perceived by a PMR inhabitant’s perception of NPMR.
There is a personal structure (you — your intent, your entropy) and there are information structures (databases and messages), and functional structures (causality and rules of interaction), and relationship structures (communication meaning and content).
One gets to know and gain competence working with and using these structures as one becomes familiar and experienced with the actual fundamental nature of NPMR (as opposed to the jumble of published personal metaphors and symbols that now definite the nature of NPMR in the popular literature.)
A small sense of interacting with the structures within NPMR can be glimpsed if you imagine what your existence would be like if you were blind and had no nerves in your skin, could speak and hear normally, and were gifted with telepathy — what would your reality be like then?
