Tom Campbell - Mechanics of Individual Worldviews

[Alaskan]

Here's a link to an interview of Tom Campbell (also found in my signature), author of My Big TOE or his Theory of Everything.

This guy is a physicist with a lot of experience sorting out what is going on for us as in regard to individual worldview consciousness. That's this interview, but if you are interested in digging deeper into what he has to offer, he believes we are all a part of a magnificent digital reality, one created by nature, but in many respects similar to living in a kind of matrix. He sees all conscious beings to be part of a collective which is self-correcting, reducing its entropy by pouring itself into a myriad of individuals to gain huge amounts of experience to reduce our individual entropy, as well as the collective we all come from at the same time.

This is my interpretation of the overall message he offers, it is my own perspective, you may see it differently, may or may not like it, probably most won't agree with him as his world view on these things isn't very common, but in time I believe will gain wider acceptance. If you are a religious individual, this kind of thing is going to be rejected by most, I imagine, as it rolls over dogmas like a Mack truck. That said, nothing in this world is completely unassailable, pick it apart, or see what you might agree with, either way it works, as we each gain experience in this world.

https://youtu.be/YGjqqjA3nP8

 

[Cyparagon]

I listened to this while cleaning my garage, so I didn't waste any of my life on it at least. From what I gathered, he spend over an hour saying, rephrasing, reiterating and repeating only a hand full of points:

1) Never try to change others. All problems can be fixed by changing yourself
2) Laws and government won't fix everything
3) Even if everything goes to shit, you're immortal and have more lives after this, so it doesn't matter.

And my main issues with them:

1) That would make you a terrible parent, a terrible boss, or a terrible teacher.
2) No one is saying laws will fix everything. Why spend so much time saying laws won't fix everything?
3) That would mean suicide is a reasonable response to any strife you may encounter.

 

[Alaskan]

Well, it really depends on where a person is at whether it is valuable to them or not, from your view point that would mean you far exceed where I'm at and are more realistic about things & clearer thinking than this individual is.

Edit: I better respond to some of your points, regarding government, he was referring to the source level of problems. Laws and government won't fix the core issue, they only operate after the fact, after something happens. Sure, laws and their penalties can change behavior, but only behavior, not the root cause.

Never try to change others, we are the problem individually?

I don't think your premise that he is saying is no one should help others grow or what you call "change others" is his full message, clearly, he wouldn't have anything to say at all if that were what he believed. I think he is just saying we need to look to ourselves first.

Laws and government won't fix everything:

Laws and government do not get to the root cause, that is how I view what he is saying.

Reincarnation:

The way I see it, we are all one thing living life in parallel in the past, present and future to come. Sure individual in the here and now due to having separate bodies with our own unique memories and wills, but in essence I think we are one thing. To me, this makes the whole idea of reincarnation moot and even if "we" come back into another body, it wouldn't really be the same individual because such doesn't really exist from that perspective. I suppose there could be another layer of individuality beyond our human lives due to some kind of entanglement which creates individual but temporary eddies called souls in the collective pool of consciousness, but all a part of the same ocean and from that not really separate.

All of the above is likely complete BS to you, I can't imagine your agreeing with any of it, I'm not trying to change your world view but I am obviously willing to share mine, regardless of how critical you can be.

 

[Cyparagon]

we are all one thing living life in parallel

Does this characteristic have any manifestations in reality? Would that grant certain people telepathy for example? How would a world that you describe be different (in a detectable way) from the world where we aren't the same living thing?

 

[Alaskan]

I've seen you deny so much here already, the best I can tell you are what is called a hard core materialist. Give yourself another 30 years of experience and perhaps you can then, but I'm not holding much hope for any time soon. So, how's that for judging someone I don't even know, just based on a few posts?

 

[ped]

I don't want to see this derailing into another "Religion" or beliefs thread.

 

[RedCowboy]

I try to treat everyone on an individual basis and keep an open mind, and some things can't be explained, but that doesn't mean that everything we know is wrong either.

 

[Encap]

Does this characteristic have any manifestations in reality?

Excellent question Cyparagon.

Campbell has made a business that caters to people who believe, or would like to believe, that a Universal Consciousness interconnects, creates and continuously evolves all existence. For them Campbell's stuff is OK entertainment.
Campbell has scientifically and logically AND mathematically deduced not only a physical theory of everything, but also the meaning of life, and written it up in terms a layman can understand for only $29.95 similar to what many other new age "quantum" mystics have done but with his own spin.

Seems to me Campbell is a clever self-promoter with a business just like any other business. Other than himself he seems to be promotoing/selling what he doesn't have--there is currently no evidence for a non physical reality-- so he sells ideas, analogy, metephor, and meaningless buzz words to make money like many other similar businesses do and have done.

Because our minds deal exclusively with ideas, our minds treat in-distinctively the physical and the non-physical. In reverse our minds find it natural to project back into the real physical world the non-physical.
Bottom line ---the physical, that which exists, and the non physical, that which is fiction and does not exist, are identical in that both are ideas within the scope of our thinking---- a direct cause of much confusion and speculation at many levels. Some clever people with good communication skills make businesses out of same.

 

[OVNI]

... that which is fiction and does not exist ...

I have never experienced anything 'metaphysical' nor have I seen any 'sightings' and such. But, probably like most people, I have had my fair share of premonitions and deja-vu incidents throughout my lifetime. I'm a pragmatic person who was educated, trained, and spent a career working in a science based field, e.g. you believe what you can measure. Thus I have a natural tendency to chalk up 'stuff' to coincidences or my mind playing a trick on me here and there. That notwithstanding, I find it harder to believe there isn't something 'out there' than believing there is. Much like proving a negative is much harder than finding the one example to prove a positive.

 

[Encap]

I have never experienced anything 'metaphysical' nor have I seen any 'sightings' and such. But, probably like most people, I have had my fair share of premonitions and deja-vu incidents throughout my lifetime. I'm a pragmatic person who was educated, trained, and spent a career working in a science based field, e.g. you believe what you can measure. Thus I have a natural tendency to chalk up 'stuff' to coincidences or my mind playing a trick on me here and there. That notwithstanding, I find it harder to believe there isn't something 'out there' than believing there is. Much like proving a negative is much harder than finding the one example to prove a positive.

You are not alone--I understand your point----same here and same can be said by most people globally not about practical reality but about specualtion that something might be 'out there' or probably is.
If you are not open to something being 'out there' meaning something you don't already know, you shut yourself off from everything you don't know already which makes confusion about what exists and what doesn't even worse. Therein lies the room for businesses like Campbell, Chopra and many others selling the bill of goods they sell to capitalize on confusion about what is and isn't which is different for every person being based on knowledge and experience, I guess. Is all good fun and entertainment and part of living life in a human sense--everything is possible in imagination, not so in the real world--we learn as we go.

To my way of thinking it is pretty simple and strightforward as follows:
There are two kinds of human thoughts: Those that handle the physical that does exist and...those that handle the non-physical that is fiction that doesn't exist. An object or an active phenomenon is real or exists on the double condition that we are able to first perceive it then describe it. By contrast that, which doesn't exist in reality, the non-physical, can only exist in our minds. Mental concepts that lack physical collateral cannot be perceived physically and our inability to describe that which doesn't exist, corroborates that nonexistence.

 

[Alaskan]

I've had a metaphysical experience, several of them. Either I am crazy, something chemical was going on in my head to cause hallucinations, or there was more to it than just me.

 

[Cyparagon]

Give yourself another 30 years of experience and perhaps you can then, but I'm not holding much hope for any time soon

I've asked you a question about your belief. Your response of "you'll understand when you're older" not only avoids the question entirely, but comes off as remarkably patronizing.

I've had a metaphysical experience, several of them.

That's more to the point at least.

That may be sufficient for you to believe, but what about those of us that haven't had those experiences? What if someone were to tell you they spoke with your great grand daughter's ghost? Your first conclusion may not be that they are lying about what they believed the experience was, but I would hope your first conclusion wouldn't be that this actually happened, either.

Is it okay to suspend judgement and just say "I don't know what happened"? Or is demanding an explanation immediately a more epistemologically honest approach?

How do we go about investigating the metaphysical? Since the vast majority of us don't have your experiences, Is there anything more for us than spooky stories and hearsay?

 

[planters]

I like this description Dr Padilla gives, of the grouping of these theories based on ever more and more abstract ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3TDO1AA1Sw

I think Tom Campbell gets too detailed about what remains a theoretical concept. . It's a little like focusing on just one region of a Mandelbrot zoom; too much remains unproven to move to the level of application to daily life.

 

[Alaskan]

Never saw a ghost, not even sure what that phenomena is, if it happens at all. Metaphysical can mean so many things to so many people. Some individuals are just materialism oriented, which is fine, we live in a material world but I think we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. From that statement, please don't tag me as religious, I believe religions are more often counter spiritual.

 

[Cyparagon]

Again you've answered none of my questions. It's strange that you'd start a thread about your worldview, then refuse to talk about it. Fine by me I guess. I'd ask you what the difference between being spiritual and being religious is, but you won't answer that... so why did I just type that out? Meh. I'll try to ignore this thread now.

 

[Encap]

Never saw a ghost, not even sure what that phenomena is, if it happens at all. Metaphysical can mean so many things to so many people. Some individuals are just materialism oriented, which is fine, we live in a material world but I think we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. From that statement, please don't tag me as religious, I believe religions are more often counter spiritual.

Good points Alaskan.
We all think that we know what is real. All we have to do is reach out and touch it. Yet, we also know that we dream, and our dreams are as real to us when we dream as our external world is to us when we are awake. We dismiss our dreams as unreal, but we do this only when we are not in the dream world. When in the dream world, we acknowledge its reality fully, only to deny it again when we leave.

We differentiate between the dream world and the waking world, between what we call the spiritual and physical. We say we see the one, and not the other and when the two are one we generally don't see it. Therefore, we focus our mental efforts and direct our attention towards this waking world almost exclusively, yet one cannot embrace one/half (waking consciousness) and expect the other half (dream consciousness) to merely go away, simply because it is considered undesirable.

"Spiritual beings having a physical experience" as you say or physical beings having a spiritual experience----either way "some days chicken, some days feathers" for lack of a better way to say it.

No matter all our scientific theories and no matter all our human religions, reality remains a mystery. It's as simple as that.