I want you to play along with me today. Read and imagine. Follow me down this rabbit hole. Don’t be afraid.
Imagine, if you can, and you know you can if you try really hard, three universes. Each is completely self contained and has no connection to the others what so ever. In order to do this you must split yourself in three, but don’t worry: it won’t hurt a bit. Now, in order for this story to have any point at all, you must follow the rules. (I know rules can seem oppressive and even arbitrary, but you must trust me that they exist for a reason and must be obeyed.)
Now, let us consider each universe singularly. The first universe is exactly like our own, so this should require very little effort to image, although anyone who has ever actually tried to imagine the universe (even just “as it is”) can tell you it is actually not easy at all to conceive the entire universe in it’s possible infinity. But nonetheless, this is our first universe: it is just like ours; you could even use ours as a substitute for the process of creating a duplicate universe (that is a lot of work for very little reward I suspect!).
Now, on to our second universe. There is a very special rule pertaining to our second universe, a rule which absolutely must be obeyed no matter what. The primary rule of this second universe is that there is no consciousness allowed anywhere in this universe. Maybe it had a beginning. Maybe it has an end. Maybe there are stars and planets, maybe not. Maybe there are hills and mountains and rivers and trees… Maybe not. Regardless, no one and no thing has ever or will ever have any awareness of anything ever in this second universe whatsoever. That is a rule and you must obey it.
Sharp minded readers are already objecting on the basis that to conceive of this second universe is to entertain a certain level of awareness of it de facto, thereby making strict observation of the primary rule of this second universe untenable. Bear with this paradox, for refreshing fruit grows on this tree.
Now, our third universe is not really a universe at all. Scientists and philosophers the world over and throughout history have debated the greatest question ever: “To Be, or Not To Be”. We will explore a leg of this maze with our third universe, for it is an anti-universe: It is To Be NOT. Instead of something, in our third universe there is nothing. No time, no space. Never was, never will be. Nothing to be aware of, no one to be aware of it. (Can anyone else hear Rod Serling at this point?)
Now, stop reading for a moment and ensure that you have a clear and precise grasp of all three universes in your mind, paradox be damned. Take a moment to study each of them in minute detail. Meditate on each universe and familiarize yourself with the particulars of each one. Next I’m going to ask a question of comparison and contrast. Do your best to answer thoughtfully. Don’t rush. There is no prize nor any penalty for any answer given (at least not from or by me – you may consider yourself rewarded or punished based on your self honesty as you answer the question).
Tell me, in all truthfulness, what is the difference between our second universe and our third?
Here's the backstory:
When I was around ten years old or so, I asked God what the purpose of life was. Why were we here? I will never forget the feeling I had when a very clear answer came into my head in the form of a thought experiment. I felt as though a very wise person was teaching a class in my mind that consisted of a series of ideas which lead with irrefutable logic from step to step to the ultimate conclusion of the lesson, the answer to my questions.
Years later I read a passage in a book with a similar thought experiment and the authors came to similar conclusions! (Lanza, Robert and Bob Berman. Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe, BenBella, 2009). I had been (and still am) a big fan of Bob Berman since I began reading his "Strange Universe" column in Astronomy Magazine as a teenager so it was really exciting and even felt like confirmation to read my ideas in a book written by real scientists and authors! I suppose all ideas are out there, property of no one, and from time to time we tap into ideas that others have tapped into before or will tap into at some point in the future, and we might feel a personal connection to the ideas, but they're never really our ideas.
So the thought experiment that I feel was transmitted to me goes like this:
First, I was shown three "boxes", for lack of a better term, that existed in a metaphysical sense. I was prodded to examine their contents and to compare and contrast what I found in them. The first box was the easiest to understand for its contents were the most familiar of the three. Inside the first box was our universe, exactly as is. Everything is the same. Pretty simple so far, right?
Next on to the second box. It too was somewhat easy to deal with, for it contained nothing. No time, no space, no awareness, no will, no matter, no energy, nothing. If you can ignore the idea that our own consciousness would have to invade it to probe its properties and confirm its nothingness, we can agree that it is the opposite of our world - the proverbial nothing to our world's something.
The third box was tricky. It contained matter and energy just like our world. Stars, planets, rocks perhaps, whatever you'd like to imagine was there, but no consciousness. It's just like our world minus consciousness and any conscious beings.
Already there's a problem with this box because your consciousness imagining anything there is a violation. So we'll have to assume there are things there, being created and destroyed by the hands of time as things progress.
Now, I don't know the fate of our universe - maybe it will go on and on forever and ever, maybe it will grow cold, dead and empty. Maybe something else? Either way, coming back to our third box universe, we are left to figure that whatever is going on in there stays in there forever, by the rules of the thought experiment, never to be known about by anyone inside or outside that box. Perhaps that universe goes on and on forever and ever, perhaps it dies. Who knows?
Who cares? - We'll never know anything about that place.
I dwelt on these boxes and their contents for a while, seeing where they differed and where they were alike, and I eventually come to a question with an answer: "What is the difference between the second box and the third box?"
Now, we cannot consider perspectives internal to either box because neither box has the capacity for perspective. Perspective is an aspect of consciousness. You could almost define the feminine, passive aspect of consciousness as perspective. Since we can only consider a conscious perspective, and since consciousness is forbidden from both the second and third boxes by rule, their contents are equally unknown and unknowable, not only to us but to all consciousness everywhere by definition. They are entirely interchangeable from every perspective, since there cannot by rule exist a perspective that could differentiate between them.
I was stunned.
The absence of consciousness is completely interchangeable with nothingness. From there I drew the only valid conclusion I could: that "something", anything and everything really, can only exist in the presence of consciousness, since the absence of consciousness is equal to the state of nothingness. If you don't think so, think about it a little longer. I don't think there is a way around this conclusion.
Carrying it forward, or perhaps I should say backwards, I had to conclude that either the entire universe came into existence after the human brain, or there was and is a consciousness that exists outside of and apart from the human brain. If the universe has been around for billions of years before Man, as most of us believe, there must have been a consciousness billions of years before Man too. Of course, there still exists the possibility that time isn't what we think it is either...
I took what I had been given and ran with it, piecing the rest together for myself: Since consciousness is an absolute requisite for the existence of anything and everything, in a sense consciousness is the basic fabric of creation; the elemental substance from which everything is made. I thought on a bit and realized that we are conscious, and therefore consciousness, and in that sense we are cocreators and observers of the world. Someone has to observer all this amazing stuff that goes on and frankly, I'm happy for the chance to do so. I wasn't too optimistic when I asked the question, but the answer I got put me in a much better mood.