Even as we, in the construction of computers, in the construction of sculpture, in the construction of novels, in the construction of paintings, simulate ourselves, so it can be said, “Does God simulate Himself in us and in the universe as it exists?” Remember, this word “simulation” does not mean creating one’s self, it means creating a system of thinking, thought, feeling and doing which is similar to, but not identical to, one’s self. If we exist as part of a universe created by the Star Maker, then we are, in every aspect of our functioning, a simulation created by that which has created everything else.
The universe created us as part of itself to study and watch the rest of the universe from a particular standpoint. Even as we watch, so may we be watched. Even as we experiment, so may we be experimented upon. We may be the result of an experiment by those in a huge laboratory, though to think this places us in a too-important position in regard to the rest of the universe. Humility consists of the realization not only of one’s own unimportance but of the unimportance of the existence of one’s whole species. We can hardly be important enough to be considered as anything more than an adjunct, a very small portion of a huge system constructed as a simulation by the Star Maker. Our God must be large enough to encompass not only all that we know but all that we do not know. He must encompass not only what we do not know and are yet to know but all that we can never know, that we are incapable of knowing.
I have been exposed to esoteric teachings which place man in a favored position with respect to his God. I have watched those who do this kind of thing, who go into special states of consciousness and come back from these states with special messages from God. I have been in such spaces myself. What I derive from this is that in these spaces I am confusing my simulation of God with God’s simulation of Himself. This is a very arrogant position for a human to take. I have analyzed these experiences very carefully and come to the conclusion that our creativity can function out of contact with the rest of the universe the way it is. We do have a modicum of free will. We do have the ability and the permission to suffer and to create conditions under which we can suffer. I have found in myself an attachment to aversion. I have found in myself righteous wrath. I have found in myself virtue. I have found in myself rationalizations. Are these simulations of God? Or are these God’s simulation of Himself?
I feel that these states, ideas, realities, are purely constructions by a very small organism on a very small planet in a very small galaxy. Our species finally is creating some cosmic noise which can probably be detected by others in the galaxy at a distance of ten to one hundred light-years out of the one hundred thousand light-years available across the galaxy. We are just beginning to make enough noise to reach other planets like ours, other stars like our sun. It has been only in the last few years that we have had this capability. There are those who believe that science as we know it programs reality. There are those who believe that science as we know it is limited and cannot possibly program a reality. There are those who believe that their own thought forms are eternal, that what we create in our psyche exists. It seems to me that this is an arrogance approaching a megalomanic state, out of contact with where God’s simulation of Himself can be.
The concept of a signal in a random noise is well worth remembering here. Our signals to our creator may not be that which we think they are. We may merely be creating noise out of which no signals can be derived. Our prayers, our thoughts, our wishful thinking, our projections onto the universe may merely be random events which we have elevated to a high level as if rational thinking, behavior, feeling and doing. Our whole existence may merely be a noise, an accident.
The rules of chaos may have generated us; at the same time generated the wishful thinking of certainties, of the generation of probabilities as if we were not noise, as if we were pure signal. If we wish to participate in God’s simulation of God, there seem to be rules, certainties, but which ones are correct? The varieties of opinion about Truth in this area are so vast, so varied, so contradictory, so paradoxical that I know of no secure way of making a choice among the more vocal adherents of this point of view.
When I am in a good space, when my positively reinforcing systems are firing in my brain, everything I do, everything I say, everything I feel, everything I think, all the people in my neighborhood that are cooperating, all seem to be part of God, to be the force of good in the universe and counter to the force of evil.
Is this anything more than a set of orders from the genetic code reified in survival circuits in a central nervous system of a medium size? Is this anything more than a personal overvaluation of my knowledge and under-valuation of my ignorance? I do not know. I am skeptical of those who claim they know. I too have precious experiences, I too have proclaimed what I have felt to be the Truth; and yet in the face of the noise I am not secure in what is a signal from or to those greater than us in this universe.
Once again I mention Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker, who could not be perceived, who could not be conceived of until all the minds on all the planets and in all the stars and in all the galaxies united into a universal universe’s mind. Then, and then only, the creature faced his Creator.
Then and then only was the Creator seen as an artist in a state of High Indifference who, without pity, without empathy, without sympathy, without sentimentality, was ready to abolish his creation in order to start over in another mode with another universe which he had not yet conceived. The Star Maker’s artistry consists in trying totally new combinations in totally new universes without regret for those which are past and without expectation for those that are future. This God, the Star Maker, constructs universes as operational systems to see what they will do once created, to see what comes next once each of these is destroyed. As the Star Maker constructs universes, he expands his own primitive consciousness to include multiple complexities which in the pure Consciousness-Without-an-Object he could not visualize. Each universe created and destroyed adds to his store of materials for future universes. This God can create anything of which he can conceive, including paradoxes which do not involve energy, matter, space, and time. Pure, abstract universes reified in dimensions of which humans cannot conceive. Absolutely certain universes, absolutely indeterminate universes, lawful universes, universes without reason, without intelligence—on and on and on through multiple eternities.
In this view, what are we? We are small accidents in a current universe about to become obsolete. We are an organism either given a certain mental power or who developed a certain mental power unnoticed, unsought, without feedback from anything but a single star named the Sun. It is even arrogant to suppose that we are a product of the Star Maker. We may be only a product of intervening processes, accidentally generated in a small portion of Superspace. We worship ourselves, we worship our own fantasies, we worship our projections onto the universe as if they are God. If to the Star Maker there is any such thing as blasphemy and High Indifference, this is it. That such small, weak, puny creatures as man could assume that they can even conceive of their Creator is the height of pride, of arrogance, of blasphemy, of irreverence, of unconsciousness, of a lack of consciousness of Reality. “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” says the Star Maker; to whom does he say it?
One of my friends once told me, “If you destroy all my delusions and illusions of reality, then you have destroyed me.” He managed to stay free of my destruction of his delusions and illusions, his wishful thinking. He happily went on doing neurosurgery—operating on the hardware of the human biocomputer. Others that I have spoken to of these matters shrug them aside, protecting their simulations of God, protecting that which they consider to be most important in order to go on living and enjoying and producing; hanging out with those with similar beliefs. My particular simulation of God as God Simulating Himself apparently is not a popular point of view. Every so often I come upon one or two persons who feel and know the same simulation as mine. They are few and far between.
When one realizes the structure of his own brain, when he realizes that he is captured by that structure—he is captured by the software, the programs, the metaprograms stored in that hardware—then he becomes skeptical of ever having a direct apperception of God, a direct knowing of what the universe really is.
Reality may be beyond the grasp of a biocomputer constructed of the material of that reality. It looks as if we may forever be cut off from an understanding of the universe as it is. This is a difficult lesson to learn, so difficult that there are times when I pretend that I haven’t learned it and join others in simulations of God other than this one. Where I go from here is not clear. The eternal noise is at a very high level. The alternatives are infinite. My ignorance is an infinity of infinities beyond my knowledge.
I cannot over-value the future any more than I can over-value the past. The past is finished, it is in storage, a very evanescent storage, not existing more than a few thousand years out of billions of years. The accuracy of the storage decreases logarithmically with time of storage. The present is perceived and apperceived with a very high noise level and with a wishful thinking projection of certainty of law on the noise. God Simulating Himself seems to be a vast and huge noisy process. Signals turn into noise when they travel too far, too many light-years. The formation of signals out of noise is an unrewarding, arrogant, human procedure. One simulation which seems to be true is noise simulating itself to generate more noise.