Consciousness and Creation

Consciousness and Creation



One way of regarding the physical universe is as a great work of art. Its material configurations and substance can be measured and analysed and provide much useful information. But this may be less important than what it means to us in detail or as a whole, the mental and emotional experiences it arouses in our minds. The value of a great novel, for example, lies, not in the physical features of the book, or even in the story it tells, but in the affect it has upon the consciousness of the reader. The same could be said of a simple parable, or verbal model.

Imagine that you are sitting admiring a view on a pleasant summer day. Such moments have meaning in the sense that, besides receiving what appears to be factual information about the scene, you may also experience a sense of wonder, of beauty or of peace; a state of mind is induced which goes beyond a physical description. Then you close your eyes and remember other scenes you have enjoyed, or you may go to sleep and dream of fantastic landscapes formed from a combination of many you have experienced in the past. Perhaps you are a painter and reproduce something of what you are seeing and feeling on canvas, not necessarily a faithful reproduction of a 'real' landscape, for it is not its physical features that you wish to convey to those who view the painting, but the meaning it has had for you, and such meaning is always compounded of memories and feelings and values.

I believe it was Alfred North Whitehead who said, "Human life can only be understood as a constant striving after values" and meaning and value have very similar connotations. Our minds search our experiences for meanings, which are not always immediately apparent. But by storing experiences in our memories we are able to reflect consciously upon them again and again in the light of later events. In building up a great store of memories we ourselves are gradually moulded by all the meanings those experiences have had for us.
Modes of Consciousness

When we believed that the earth, much as we know it today and including mankind, was all literally created in seven days, the act of creation and the subsequent control of earth's inhabitants by God were regarded as two quite different matters separated in time. Now it is evident that creation is an ongoing organic process, this distinction is no longer valid. But there is another which should take its place, and that is the distinction between planning the purposes and processes of creation on the one hand, and supervising the acting out of the processes on the other. These two activities of consciousness continue alongside one another and are respectively controlling and regulating forces of the universe.

I suggest that consciousness has two modes of operation in its production of images - 'linear', and 'free-play'. In linear consciousness the images of three dimensional things and events are selected in real-time sequence, and largely from the wealth of information provided by the physical senses. They are selected for their meaning for immediate action. Linear consciousness therefore is typical of waking experience and of consciousness during observation or the supervision of our own or other's physical activities.

When we are not following events of the world outside, thought and imagination may be idle or random, searching for meaning, or it may be organised around some objective as when an artist contemplates the creation of a new picture, or a production engineer the production of a piece of machinery. Then thought and imagination is likely to lean towards the free-play variety. In free-play consciousness, the images of things and events are selected for their relevance to a future or past event rather than present action. They are therefore largely drawn from recorded knowledge and memory. The images received unbidden from the senses are ignored as far as possible as an interference. Real time is relevant only as it may be related to the end product of the process, as it is to the plan when planning. Free-play consciousness therefore seeks to be free from concentration upon the present moment and ranges over time, remembering the past and anticipating the future. It is typical of dreaming, planning, or thinking through problems.

When planning to produce something, one normally begins with a provisional image of the final objective. Then various stages of production between the commencement and the final objective will be envisaged as subordinate objectives, followed by stages intermediate to them with still shorter term objectives, until the artist or engineer has in his mind's eye an impression of the whole plan of work in considerable detail. It will be necessary to go backwards and forwards between longer and shorter term objectives, revising the former when they prove inconsistent with the possibilities found open for the latter, even though the former must always govern the latter. Thus the process of planning involves a hierarchy of decision levels, corresponding to objectives for various periods of time ahead. Only when the plan is judged sufficiently advanced and viable, will the artist begin to paint or the engineer produce his series of working drawings in real time.

In everyday life both modes of consciousness must work in harmony. Plans are never completed in every detail before operations are commenced, because some necessary information will be lacking, while planned operations must be abandoned for improvisation from time to time to deal with unexpected hitches. All plans can be analysed into successions of actions, into cause and effect; all consciously willed actions have their own objectives. At the moment of action, planning and supervision coalesce.

Consciousness and memory - these are the two aspects of life upon which all our experiences, our beliefs, our prejudices and our peace of mind ultimately depend. and yet they are amongst the least understood of all the wonders of the universe which philosophers, mystics, theologians and scientists, each from their own particular point of view, have sought to unravel over the ages.
Fawcett's Philosophy

In the book 'Nurslings of Immortality' (1957) R.C.Johnson, a philosopher and physicist, expounds the philosophy of E.D.Fawcett, which is called 'Imaginism'.In a Foreword to the book Fawcett himself explains the basis of this philosophy thus:-

Plato, upholder of "the divine principle of Reason", laid the foundations of the rationalism which Hegel, using and developing Kant's categories, was to complete. Hegel, exploring his own mind, declined to regard the reason showing therein as merely "one among a crowd of other faculties" . He exalted this phase of mind into "the basis of everything", into the "energy" and "sovereignty" of the universe, ...Imaginism differs radically from Hegel's adventure of thought. It insists that his experiment was made at the cost of ignoring very much which human knowledge includes. ... Imaginism contends that [the activity of] ultimate reality ... resembles, not the abstraction - reason - but the private imagining or fancy so richly exemplified in ourselves.

According to Johnson, Fawcett says in his 'Zermatt Dialogues';

Pure imagining, which is not about Reality, but Reality itself, shining in its own light, is all in all. What is before it is posited by it, conservatively or additively; the past as 'made' reality is conserved; the future is the imagining in its creative march.

In the first place therefore Fawcett and Johnson accept the reality of a supreme spiritual power or faculty which they regard as synonymous with 'Divine Imagining'.and inclusive of both the activity of creating and the things created. Divine Imagining thus has two aspects. The first aspect is 'conservative and it is in virtue of this activity continuously exercised that things continue in being'. The second is 'additive and therefore rich in creative novelty'. A distinction is made however between pure imagining, which is reality itself, and the creative activity, called 'consciring' which produces 'conscita', the things created.

Johnson says of Divine Imagining:

It is God ineffable, the supreme Mystery towards which the highest mystics soar, perhaps in vain. Yet it is prolonged into God immanent.

and of Divine Consciring

Divine Consciring is prolonged into ourselves where it acquires a certain independence. We are aware of the finite consciring in ourselves where it is usually referred to as 'consciousness' or in a focused form as "attention".

It seems clear that the distinction being made between Divine Imagining and Divine Consciring is similar to that made between God transcendent and God immanent and also, I suggest, between the concepts of planning and supervision discussed above and the concepts of control and regulation to be discussed below.

But Fawcett dislikes the word consciousness because:

in the first place it has a rather ambiguous connotation; secondly, there is no derived term equivalent to "consciousing", and thirdly, it suggests a kind of neutral light of awareness ...

He (or Fawcett) therefore avoids speaking of human consciousness or of cosmic consciousness. When prolonged into ourselves the distinction we would normally make between the 'conscious' state of our minds and Jung's ' unconscious' is recognised by referring respectively to the 'reflective ' consciring and 'irreflective' consciring of the human soul. These strange words indicate where Fawcett and Johnson place the emphasis within the general concept of consciousness and enable them to maintain that

proceeding downwards from man, we have a vast range of levels of consciring in Nature, where it is in some degree reflective, down to electrons and protons on the lowest of irreflective levels.

It is true that the word 'consciousness' has so far resisted any agreed definition. It is sometimes used to mean simply awareness but more often in a wide sense to signify all the subjective mental phenomena, as distinct from the physical phenomena which we can identify in the brain. As such it seems unlikely to be replaced by 'imagining' or' consciring'. But, semantic problems apart, Fawcett's philosophy of Imaginism is of great value to the study of consciousness.

Understanding the relationship between our selves and the physical universe of science has always been, and still is, crucial to a full understanding of the world of our being. We have perfect freedom to think whatever we are able to think, and in many ways those thoughts, through the instrumentation of our physical bodies, can affect much of the rest of our physical environment and even influence the thoughts of others. But although there are no obvious limits set to our thoughts there are clear limits to the physical effects we can produce for we cannot transcend the laws of nature and we do not know who or what produced those laws.
Regulation and Control

All the instruments used and the materials worked upon when we purposefully affect the physical world would undergo change in course of time even if we left them alone. Apart from other people around who may affect them, natural forces can be relied upon to produce change and decay. All our conscious plans and subsequent physical actions therefore should rightly be regarded as regulating the anticipated course of events in the world for our own purposes, within the ultimate control of natural law. This distinction between control and regulation helps to identify boundaries of sub-systems contained within more complex systems, or parts within wholes, for a regulator is a component of the system it regulates, whereas a controller is outside the system it controls and may be the regulator of a larger containing system.

Whenever a process is being used to achieve a particular end and, for any reason, it is likely to be subject to unanticipated disturbances, the remedy may be to employ what is called 'negative feedback regulation', by which errors developing in the planned progress of the work are detected in the early stages and correction applied in the opposite direction to the error. A common example of a simple controlled system regulated by negative feedback is given by a heating installation employing a thermostat which, by turning the heating on and off in response to small movements away from some preferred temperature, maintains the actual temperature of a room within narrow limits. The system is 'controlled' by the selection of a preferred temperature as an objective for the thermostat which is the 'regulator'. All systems organised, designed or made by people, and which are therefore the products of the human mind and belong to the 'World 3' described by Karl Popper (1972), are controlled, and possibly regulated as well, by conscious minds. Consciousness enables judgements of value to be introduced into decisions, in addition to judgements of fact to which computers and other machines are confined.

If there is a God, the Creator, in the image of whose cosmic consciousness ours is in some sense made, it is perhaps to the institutions which humanity itself has created that we should look for clues to the organisational methods used for the creation of the universe. Let us consider therefore how our human consciousness organises and regulates human institutions.

A good example is the management organisation of a manufacturing business involving large numbers of people. Such an organisation is not a physical part of the enterprise as are the departments and their physical contents. It is a system for planning and supervising (and thus controlling and regulating) the work of all the people, buildings, plant, machinery, tools and so on, assembled for a purpose, so that they behave as parts and sub-parts of the whole enterprise, an artefact of World 3. A feature of the system is that its sub-systems and sub-sub-systems form a hierarchy of control levels such that each level constrains, but does not finally determine, the behaviour of the level below. This hierarchical form is required by the mode of consciousness called for in planning a 'tree' of objectives to ensure that the ultimate purpose of the enterprise is accomplished , to which all relevant objectives must be subordinate. Each step upwards in the level of hierarchical control adds, so to speak, another 'dimension' to the activity of planning the whole.

Genes regulate the growth of our living bodies including the growth of brains and other physical regulators. These latter develop programmed responses to internal ills which threaten the body's existence, and regulate, coordinate and control physical systems which carry on, mostly very efficiently, without us giving them much attention or even being aware of their existence. Thus they maintain our bodies as effective automated instruments for interaction with their environment. For a brain to carry out this function of keeping living beings healthy it needs an internal working memory and much information in the form of feedback from the rest of the body, like any other computer regulating a machine. But it is not obvious that consciousness is needed to play any part.

If danger threatens or assistance or food is required from outside the body then a second physical system for survival and reproduction in a hostile environment, involving interaction between the environment and the automated machine, comes into play. The regulation of this interaction is also a function of the brain, for which it requires information about the environment via the sense organs of the body and a motor system to make adequate programmed responses to the situation the senses disclose. The more evolved the life form and its brain, and the more opportunities and ability it has had for learning, the greater the variety and complexity of the situations to which its programming will enable it to respond successfully. Whether or not these life forms are actually conscious of their activity at this level there again seems to be no necessity for any consciousness to be present.

But in the human, if not in other highly evolved species, responses are also initiated for situations for which there has been no programming. These may occur when a person detects a meaning existing below the surface of the situation which the senses reflect, and feels that it calls for a response to be created. Now a higher level system is involved which, for its regulation, does require consciousness and a memory bank of a higher order, one which houses the complex memories of a lifetime's conscious experiences. Perhaps, in this system, the whole space-time brain becomes the memory bank, while the regulator of this system, it is suggested, is not the brain but the human mind.
Consciousness and Space

Because the East has never ceased to retain a deep interest in matters spiritual, some of those seeking a revival of that interest in the West have naturally looked for inspiration from the religious faiths and perennial wisdom of the East, from the Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads, and the Hindu, Taoist and Buddhist philosophies. In the Chandogya Upanishad as translated by Juan Mascaro (1965) there is the following thought:-

We should consider that in the inner world Brahman is consciousness; and we should consider that in the outer world Brahman is space. These are the two meditations.

In the 'Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism', (1959) by Lama Govinda, this idea has been expanded as follows:-

The fundamental element of this cosmos is space. Space is the all-embracing principle of higher unity. Space... is not only a sine qua non of all existence, but a fundamental property of our consciousness.

Our consciousness determines the kind of space in which we live. The infinity of space and the infinity of consciousness are identical. In the moment in which a being becomes conscious of his consciousness, he becomes conscious of space. If, therefore, space is a property of our consciousness, then it may be said with equal justification that the experience of space is a criterion of spiritual activity and of a higher form of awareness. The way in which we experience space, or in which we are aware of space, is characteristic of the dimension of our consciousness. The three-dimensional space, which we perceive through our bodies and its senses, is only one among many possible dimensions.

Again in a later book Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Coinsciousness (1976) Govinda says:-

There is no time for the Enlightened Ones. This, however, does not mean that for an Enlightened One the past has been extinguished or memory blotteed out. On the contrary, the past ceases to be a quality of time and becomes a new order of space, which we may call the Fourth Dimension, in which things and events which we have experienced piecemeal can be seen simultaneously, in their entirety, and in the present. .... Only if we recognize the past as "a true dimension of ourselves," and not only as an abstract property of time, shall we be able to see ourselves in proper perspective to the universe, which is not an alien element that surrounds us mysteriously, but the very body of our past, in whose womb we dream until we awake into the freedom of enlightenment.

Since Einstein produced his theories of relativity it has become normal for many scientists to think of time as something like a fourth space dimension and the space, which the four dimensions define, is called the continuum of space-time. To understand what this means requires, for most of us, a considerable effort of imagination, for the objective material universe in four dimensions has no intrinsic 'now' and all distinctions between past, present and future are lost. Matter does not change or move in space-time. Our bodies have material form both in three and in four dimensional space but in the former they twist and turn and move position. In the latter they appear as static forms greatly elongated by extension in the additional space dimension replacing time. If we had the ability to be conscious of four dimensional objects in four dimensional space we should perceive their past and their present as coexistent, just as we perceive as co-existent their extensions in three space dimensions. In particular, our past and present brain states would co-exist and provide us with an encoded physical record of our conscious experiences throughout our lives.
Prof. Laszlo's Psi Field

Scientists might say that the space-time continuum is merely a model of reality and should not be taken too literally. But is it possible that space-time is just as real as three dimensional space but that it is the limitation of our consciousness which prevents us from seeing it as so?

In his book 'The Creative Cosmos' (1993)Prof. Laszlo reminds us that the concept of fields is not new to science but goes back to Michael Faraday and Clerk Maxwell in the middle of the last century. He points out that

the reality of space is underscored by the fact that the photons exchanged in electromagnetic field interactions are virtual particles without independent existence apart from their interactions,

and cites other examples of 'phenomena which would lack every semblance of reality unless ascribed to underlying fields

Clearly these fields are regions of space-time within which specific types of phenomena occur. and Laszlo goes on to proposes a universal psi-field underlying and inter-connecting all of matter. In the quantum vacuum, which he identifies with space-time, he distinguishes two kinds of energies corresponding to two kinds of waves. The first is the quantum energy which becomes trapped in mass and is defined in Einstein's mass-energy equivalence relationship. According to Laszlo quanta behave like mass-carrying soliton waves. As these quanta move around in the massless virtual particle gas of the quantum vacuum they create secondary energy waves of a scalar type which do not carry mass. These two types of wave interact with one another and form a feedback loop in which the scalar waves are modulated by the movements of the quanta solitons, and in turn the modulated scalar waves affect the movements of other quanta. This can be likened to the way that waves on the sea carry information in their modulated forms caused by the movements of ships and in turn affect the movements of other ships. Very similar ideas to these were expressed by David Bohm in his Causal Interpretation of quantum theory (1987).

Laszlo attaches great importance to the point that his two kinds of waves propagate at different speeds The soliton vector waves from which are constructed the entities of the physical universe are restricted to the limiting velocity 'c'. But the information carrying scalar waves, being massless, propagate faster than 'c' and may even, in some conditions, approach infinite speeds, i.e. instantaneous propagation. 'The result is the observed nonlocality - a vacuum-transmitted feedback of one particle's state to the other.

For Laszlo the stage for the activity of the greater universe is space-time, the quantum vacuum, a structured virtual energy field, a four dimensioned hologram with the history and possible futures of all the virtual particles of the vacuum imprinted and encoded in the interference patterns created by the soliton and scalar waves. Any small location of four dimensional space-time would contain all this information about the past and the future possibilities for all matter, as at that moment and assuming no further intervention. This would be similar to the way in which any small area of a two dimensional hologram contains information of all parts of a three dimensional subject photographed.

John Gribbin (1995) also has taken up the idea, which he attributes to John Cramer of Washington University, of two types of waves in space-time, in this case a retarded wave and an advanced wave, from which he proposes a 'transactional interpretation' of quantum mechanics associated with the time reversal implications inherent in quantum theory.
Movement in Space-time

I hold in my hand a three dimensioned object, a sheet of printed paper. If I put it down and leave it for a time and then go back it is still there unchanged. So in addition to form in three dimensions it also has duration in the fourth dimension of time. It is an object of physical substance, existing in the objective world of our perception. But it is more than that for it also serves a purpose, that of conveying information from another person which will be meaningful to me. To receive this information I confine my attention to the surface of the paper for a period of time during which that attention moves systematically in a recognised sequence from one to another of its two dimensioned printed forms or letters During this time the printed paper does not need to move or change. What moves is my attention and what changes is the content of my consciousness.

Now suppose that I lift my head and look out of the window at the physical world outside. We form our conscious impression of the world mainly from an unconscious reading of successive states of our brains produced by coding and re-coding signals received through our sense organs from beyond our bodies. But there is no reason, indeed it is unlikely, that everything from beyond our bodies is signalled or, when it is, that it is faithfully reproduced in our consciousness. What I observe is, apparently, an objective world, deployed in three dimensional space and in continuous movement and change. But perhaps this is not so .Perhaps the reality is that the objective world is a four dimensioned static world over which my conscious attention is moving, in company with all other conscious living beings, abstracting thereby a succession of three dimensional cross sections ,each slightly different from the one before, and thus producing a moving picture much as a cinematograph projector does from a reel of film.

Suppose the physical universe and all physical objects ,including our brains, extend in the four dimensional space called space-time, and suppose that our respective conscious attentions, focused to three dimensions, are travelling together along the lifelines of our brains such that their movements in the direction of the time axis are maintained at the speed of light. We should not expect to be any more conscious of these extensions into the fourth dimension than in fact we are. The reason is that when we (i.e. our conscious attentions) travel fast, near to the speed of light, we experience a shortening of the distance from us of all objects along the line of movement. The amount of shortening is proportional exponentially to the speed of travel. At the speed of light, it would become one hundred per cent and the extension of all objects in the line of travel would appear telescoped to a point. Thus we should lose consciousness of a whole dimension, and all the series of modified universes arranged along it, but would retain the effect of a changing universe produced by the relative motion between our attention and the series of universes in space-time.

If this were indeed the position it would be irrelevant that matter, such as our bodies, cannot ever approach anything like the speed of light, because all matter would be stationary in four dimensional reality and only mind's focused attention would move, unimpeded by inertia. In the relationship between minds and brains it is suggested that it is the cosmic mind, perhaps through a hierarchy of subsidiary minds, which thinks and feels and controls consciousness and all its sub-processes, while brains, which do nor experience anything, monitor, encode and record what associated minds experience in addition to the signals they monitor, encode and record from the sense organs.

Thus it could be that the four dimensional space of space-time, Laszlo's Psi field or field of consciousness, is where the cosmic consciousness manifests the 'conservative' aspect of Fawcett's Divine Imagining. It is here perhaps that 'the past as made reality' is preserved'. However the canvas of space-time does not display a completed picture. It displays a universe in which the future is determined and there is no freewill. But, by including the principle of uncertainty, the natural law opened up many different potentialities as well as limitations for the development of the universe. It was this choice of natural law which was the first and the greater creation, and all the potentialities whether realised or not are worthy of representation in the masterpiece. Govinda reminds us that three dimensional space and four dimensional space-time are only two of the many that are possible and, whereas space-time provides us with a model of the world of conscious awareness, modelling the world of conscious creativity takes us into spaces of more dimensions than four and correspondingly higher levels of consciousness.
Multiple Universes

Given the physical laws of the universe as interpreted by quantum mechanics there was almost an infinite number of possibilities for the future development of the universe from the Big Bang but, so far as we are aware, only one actuality. The possibilities depended only upon the initial conditions but the actuality depended also upon passing time and the collapse of wave functions. In quantum theory mathematical wave functions correlate with assemblies of superimposed alternative possibilities for the future. When one possibility of an assembly is observed to occur, or to have occurred, the remainder are assumed no longer relevant and the wave function collapses.

But, according to a theory initiated by an American, Hugh Everett, in 1957, observation does not cause the wave function to collapse because none of the alternative possibilities are rejected. They become instead actualities of as many new and slightly different universes, and no universe is more actual than the rest. Although these universes are all linked together by their origin in the past they are completely unable to communicate physically with each other. Fantastic though this theory may seem, it is claimed to be completely consistent with the mathematics and the known facts and is supported by some physicists.

Since in Everett's world all possibilities have equal status, all future physical universes are fully determined and in principle predictable. They could be, in fact, all the possible universes which the natural laws allow to result from the initial conditions of the Big Bang, given the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. The initial universe of the Big Bang will be succeeded in the following moment by as many universes as will display all the possibilities allowed for that moment by natural law, and similarly for every subsequent moment unless or until the moment of the 'Great Crunch' arrives. If we instinctively reject all this as absurd it is only, I suggest, because we are so used to thinking of matter as consisting of the solid material lumps of Newtonian physics. If we think of it in its other manifestations as waves or as mental constructions in space and time, which it equally may be, the theory does not seem quite so improbable.

Where might we expect to locate Everett's parallel chains of universes? In space-time all of this virtually infinite number of universes could be present together, were it not that the theory requires they be unable to communicate or affect each other in any physical way. I suggest therefore that each universe would have its own three dimensions of space together with one common dimension which is that we know as time Thus an infinite number of space dimensions would be required beyond the four which are sufficient to contain all the universes we have so far considered. If this seems unbelievable let us consider further these dimensions and the spaces they define.

We do not accept that any object can exist physically unless we can perceive or infer that it has extension in precisely three dimensions of space and some duration in time. But we class as 'ordinary space' that defined by three Cartesian co-ordinates at right angles to each other, because this is the space which we assume surrounds physical objects. With only two dimensions and two co-ordinates we call the space defined a plane. A space of one dimension is defined by a single ordinate, or straight line having no thickness or depth, and a point defines pure locality occupying no space at all.

The length of a line is unaffected by the number of points it is required to contain, nor is the size of a plane affected by the number of lines it may be supposed to have, which may be anything from zero to an infinity. We can imagine a large number of planes stacked or superimposed upon one another within a third dimensions of ordinary space. But since a plane has no thickness, the extension of the stack in the third dimension would be unaffected by the number of planes, even if this were an infinite number, and would depend only upon the arbitrary distances between them. If this is so for two dimensional planes in a three dimensional space it should be so also for three dimensional spaces in a four dimensional space and for four dimensional spaces in a five dimensional space and so on to infinity.

Because our consciousness is not able to visualise spaces of more than three dimensions this does not necessarily mean that they cannot exist. We can overcome our inability to visualise them by using their mathematical symbolism. If 'l' symbolises a line l2 symbolises a square and 'l3' a cube of space, all of which can be easily visualised. But if l, l2 and l3 why not l4, l5, .....ln?

But spaces of any number of dimensions are nothings by themselves, literally 'not (physical) things', but rather facilities for our conscious selves to distinguish between ideas, and to establish them in form, order and relationship. They are not physical percepts but concepts, mental ideas whose existence depends upon our being aware of them. Does this not suggest that in the last analysis the universes themselves may also be not percepts but concepts, concepts of minds other than our own which we are privileged to observe?

We assume that the natural laws of the universe have been with us unchanged, together with the concepts of space and time, since the initial conditions of the Big Bang, If this is so the whole range of all the subsequent alternative possibilities for the development of the universe, allowed by the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, became determined at the same time. In principle all the possible parallel universes of Everett's theory were determined and could have been foreseen and mapped if there were anyone there to foresee them.

Suppose that some part of the cosmic mind's consciousness were sweeping a three dimensional pathway of attention through absolute space of infinite dimensions, maintaining a constant speed along the time dimension, equivalent to the speed of light. As it passes it illuminates selected three dimensional universes, and receives to itself from them the experience of their apparent movement and change. Thus it would mark out one series of universes as uniquely distinguished by its passage. For that series the past, the present and the future would now also have a meaning in terms of the position of the cosmic attention.

The sweeping cosmic mind might be fully aware of the whole content of the particular three dimensional universe being swept at each successive moment. But that awareness could be departmentalised so that abstractions of mind focusing upon separated physical objects might be unaware of anything else. Attention alighting upon a human body might remain with it and lose all other direct awareness, although able to obtain indirect knowledge of the external physical world by following the successive states of its own body's brain. Conversely, in ways science has yet to discover, mind focused upon a brain can affects the latter's subsequent physical state, which is as much as to say that the subsequent path taken by the cosmic mind sweeping through absolute space will be affected to that extent

One might speculate that the process of cosmic creation comprises three distinct phases. The first phase covers the establishing of a system of natural law, including a degree of uncertainty, to which all actualisation must conform. The second consists of working out all the possible universes which have a potential for actualisation within the constraints of the law. The third is the choice of alternative paths of actualisation which this opens up. These three phases do not follow one another in the time dimension but occur simultaneously being similar to the modes of consciousness described in an earlier section of this paper. Actualisation - the appearance of a succession of physical universes - converts virtual mental energy into the physical energy of the Big Bang. If the natural laws had been so selected, creative imagining might then have ceased and given way to observing thereafter a fully determined sequence of events. But natural law, as interpreted by quantum theory, only constrains and does not determine the progress of events, so that there are very many alternative _paths left open along the time dimension. This might have been intended to introduce pure chance into creation but it could also suggest that a creator did not intend to confine itself thereafter to observing the unknowable evolution of its creation, but rather to intervene throughout the process as a regulator to ensure the achievement of a pre-determined goal against possible but uncertain error.

The regulation of such a vast and increasingly complex system as the material universe has become calls for an equally complex organisation for regulation, matching the former's scope and potential for action. Thus, in addition to 'consciring' the design of the physical universe, the infinite creative cosmic mind must consider its own corresponding evolution as an effective organisation for 'consciring'. Such an organisation does not have to be rigid. Apart from being made to evolve with the evolving universe its units of finite conscious minds can be thought of as forming, dividing and re-forming in any combination according to need. But I suggest the resulting structures of minds do all require to retain hierarchical forms so that constraint upon regulation may be imposed by the cosmic mind through descending levels of consciousness, corresponding to any necessary extent with the descending dimensional powers of space.

The processes which have been described cover aeons of time, but are nevertheless still finite if the assumption is made that the creation of our universe will eventually end, as it apparently began, with a four dimensional singularity. There seem to be three stages in the process of creation. The first is the establishment of the natural laws with their built in uncertainty. The second is the working out and registering of all the possible outcomes of those laws leading in every case, nevertheless, to a final second singularity. The third is the choosing of a pathway for mind's conscious experience through the displayed possibilities from singularity to singularity.

A complete end of everything at this point seems unnatural. What appeals more aesthetically is that the whole process should begin over again with or without some adjustment to the natural laws, so that the possibilities for mental experiences are literally endless. Clearly speculations at this level are fairly pointless unless in the context of mysticism or religion. But that we should speculate and probe for knowledge of a possible cosmic mind of great complexity transcending our own is to my mind essential if we are to understand what we are doing when we make choices and thereby ourselves contribute, in however small a way, to the on-going creation of the universe.
Memory

We are used to the existence of memory storage in computers. There the stores are physical components such as magnetic tapes or disks. The state of the magnetism can carry information, much as notes we write on paper remind us of information we might forget if our own memory fails us. Neurologists look for human memories to be written likewise in the physical states of the brain. Experiments with hypnosis and the experience of old age suggests that everything which we experience may be recorded and that failure to remember any experience of the mind arises not from the loss or fading of the recordings over time but from the inefficiency of recording or retrieval mechanisms. This implies a vast memory store which needs to become greater still to an unknown extent if it has to accommodate memories inherent in the collective unconscious which would presumably have been implanted in the brain from conception. Neurologists nevertheless seem confident that the capacity of the three-dimensional human brain is adequate for the task although it is not clear whether the needs of the collective unconscious have been or can be allowed for in making such an assessment.

A brain designed in four space dimensions would have a vastly greater capacity for storing memories than one designed in three, for each momentary state of the whole brain would need to record only the perception of a single moment. In a physical universe of four space dimensions all the brain states of all who had lived would be preserved. Together with everything else of a physical nature they would extend into the past, and together would form a single network recording the past experiences of the whole of conscious life. But all past things would be immobile and lifeless. If a conscious observer of the universe concentrated attention on the space where the past ends and gives way to the future, it would be seen that there was apparent movement there. But it would in fact be, not the movement of change but of growth, and it would be seen like the successive pictures projected upon a cinema screen. Each of these is slightly different from the one preceding it, but all are preserved unchanged when they pass off the screen and add to the growth of the film on the take off reel.

If the observer turned attention to the future there would, of course, be no more to observe than in the future of our three dimensional world. But if some event in the past were selected, by observing there successive cross-sections in the direction of the future at the speed c of the universe's growth the event could be observed again as moving in three dimensions in all its original, dynamic vividness and movement. So that what we see as the movement of objects within a three dimensioned world could

be in fact the movement of a minds attention focused upon three dimensions in a universe of four.

If attention were free, when necessary, from concentration upon following the fleeting 'now' of four dimensional creation, this situation could provide the mind with a perfect memory bank. It would contain the record of all the brains successive states, like a monitoring camera film or video tape. The mind's attention could wander over the records and be focused at will, allowing for the recall of values and relationships and generate feelings and emotions which imagination might further weave into new ideas, all of which would be added to its contents at the present moment.

But if mind's attention were able to select too easily and observe too vividly the recorded past states of its companion physical brain the attractions of 'day dreaming' might be irresistible, and might seriously interfere with our attention to the present. It would be necessary, therefore, that mind's present access to the experience of the past should be constrained to what is necessary for the efficient use of our intelligence in affecting the future at the 'now'.
References

1. Bohm,David & Peat, F.David (1987) Science, Order and Creativity, - Routledge, London.
2. Govinda, Lama Anagorica (1959) Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, - Rider & Co,, London.
3. Govinda, Lama Anagorica (1976) Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness, Theosophical Publishing House, Illinois.
4. Gribbin, John (1995) Schrodinger's Kittens, - Wiedenfeld & Nicholson.
5. Johnson, R.C. (1957) Nurslings of Immortality, - Hodder & Stoughton.
6. Laszlo, Prof. Ervin (1993) The Creative Cosmos, - Floris Books, Edinburgh
7. Mascaro, Juan (1965) The Upanishads, - Penguin Books.
8. Popper, Karl (1972) Objective Knowledge. An Evolutionary Approach. - Oxford University Press.
www.scimednet.org/library/fulpapr/ConCreat_VO2.htm