Foreword

Although our universe is unrelentingly complex, it operates on relatively few known rules. Physicists refer to these forces that govern everything from radioactive decay to planetary orbits as the Four Fundamental Forces. Speculations about a fifth Fundamental Force, or the quintessence (from Latin), have been evident in texts spanning from Vedic philosophy (more reading) to modern physics. In fact, the world’s largest machine is dedicate to accelerating and colliding hadrons, attempting to discover a smaller particle that could shed some light on this supposed fifth force (more reading). Located at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, the Large Hadron Collider is 27 kilometers (16.8 miles) long, and powered by superconducting electromagnets. CERN is constantly researching and developing new ways to discover any unknown smaller particles making up the hadrons. Physicists speculate that the fifth force will answer the questions left unresolved by the standard model, proposing supersymmetry to complete the equations that unifies all the forces (more reading). As it sits now, gravity is not well explainable in terms of the other three forces.

I am going to interject here to say that I am NOT a physicist. Although well endowed with an education in psychoactive experiences, I do not possess any advanced knowledge aside from personal research. Currently I am enrolled at UNC Asheville and plan to double major in physics and (tentatively) psychology. Due to my fundamental lack of an institutionalized physics education I am taking an intro course to help me find my footing before diving into the department. I’m not exactly certain what it is, but I have always has this thing calling out to me—a conscious entity I dare say. There is something missing; whether it is this fundamental component of atomic forces or something unimagined. I want to try to explain us by explaining that missing thing—one day. For now, though, I am learning about the basics of light and optics.

Photography is my means of synthesis between what is written and what can be visualized. I am highly visually inspired by literature as well as scientific postulation. Recently, I tested out some kaleidoscope imagery to demonstrate how different angles of mirrors create different numbers of reflections of the same images. This series can be viewed on Kaleidystopia. The photos used in this series are from an experiment I was doing awhile back dropping different color food dyes into a vase of water and watching the way the colors interacted. I was reading Chaos by James Gleick at the time and was fascinated by fluid dynamics. Though they are not deeply related to the topic to be discussed, they elucidate the simultaneous patterns and unpredictability in the way things flow.

Everything is Energy

I need to lay down a bit more scientific theory before I descend into quantum thoughts on the mind. As I discussed above, hadrons are a major part in the process of finding this sort of “other” fundamental force in the theoretical physics world today. For understandings sake, hadron is often used interchangeably with proton, which are made up of even smaller particles, such as quarks and gluons. Gluons are referred to as the “messengers for the strong atomic force” because they carry out the interaction, gluing quarks together to form protons, and protons into nuclei. Aside from the fact that the gravitron has never been discovered, there are other holes in the reasoning that ramming protons into each other is the sure fire way to discover this fifth force. There are so many similarities between the natural world defined by these forces and the inner workings of our minds that help make up consciousness and perception—similarities that I argue are ignored due to lack of “empirical” evidence. However, I’m not convinced that physics is a wholistic enough science to explain why things work on a conscious level. It is strange to me that we can come to the conclusion that everything is energy, and yet ignore the very generators in our bodies and minds as sources of this fundamental conscious energy.

What it Means to Be Conscious (As We Know It)

While there are many definitions and interpretations about what it means to be conscious, most of neuroscience points towards an association with an animal nervous system. Other commonalities between our working understanding of consciousness include self-awareness of perception and sensations, as well as individual experiences and internalization during different states of neural activity. While there are different states of consciousness, we do not know how to define conscious awareness beyond what electrical activity we can measure in the brain. The very definition of “unconscious” has some holes in it in terms of providing an accurate symmetrical opposite to consciousness. It lumps together sleeping, comas, and pretty much any other state where the person cannot give definitive physical feedback or neurological signaling that would suggest complete and total awareness of surroundings.

There’s certainly argument that trying to pry into more spiritual reasoning behind physical and neurological happenstances is tainting science with mysticism. In fact, Einstein did criticize Bohr for at one point (more reading). But Bohr, as well as Heisenberg and Schrödinger, were deeply intrigued by the idea that their Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics could help explain areas of the unconscious we didn’t understand—or have access to on our side of things (wayyyy more reading if you like math). There was a certain understanding that consciousness was needed to make sense of physical reality, or to generate meaning within in. If consciousness as we understand it is essentially just the ability to prove our awareness to science, I think we have fundamentally missed the point of our gift of consciousness.

“Say you and a friend are looking at a sunset. Your body is processing a huge variety of sensory inputs...The hard problem, or what the philosopher Joseph Levine called the “explanatory gap,” is determining how physical and biological processes—all of them understood easily enough on their own—translate into the singular mystery of subjective experience. If this gap cannot be bridged, then consciousness must be informed by some sort of inexplicable, intangible element. And all of a sudden we are back to Descartes.”

— Joshua Lang, The Atlantic

Energy and “Consciousness”

Since energy is proven to be of fundamental importance to all physical processes, would it not extend to the physical processes of neural communication? Could what we refer to as “consciousness,” a mental process, be describable in terms of physical processes? Energy organizes systems of stimuli in the physical world, which could mean what we think of as our ‘sentient awareness’ is more akin to the organization of some sort of neuro-chemical energy to form our human perceptions.

Though I do not think that our human minds have some tangential, conscious control over wave function collapse (von Neumann–Wigner interpretation), the possibility that we have an individual pull on the fabric of space time seems an unavoidable avenue in the fundamentals of our existence. Consciousness may not necessarily be the cause of any particular event, but it is inadvertently the creator of all events we are able to perceive. We experience stimuli from the physical world—stimuli that behaves according to certain rules, follows distinct patterns—and our perception of reality is literally created based on our perpetual synthesis of this stimuli into neuro-chemical responses. Our bodies are incredibly unique material manifestation of an energy that cannot be created or destroyed. Our brains are quantum computing devices, constantly working with the dual perspective of the two hemispheres to formulate a definition of individual realities relative to the collective experience.

All this stimuli, all these photons and electrons, operate in specific ways that make everything we can experience and describe possible. Randomness isn’t even random, it’s just chaos. Therefore, I declare “random, inexplicable” behavior, as well as how our consciousness operates on a fundamental level, my new frontier in our collective quest for knowledge. I want to delve more into the reasons the forefathers of quantum mechanics thought this could explain the “unconscious,” and why it hasn’t been done yet.

“...consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”

— Erwin Schrödinger

Fifth Fundamental Force of Conscience

After having a better basic understanding of how quantum mechanics applies to our universe and every particle in it, we can hypothetically substitute ourselves for the particle. All atoms have emission and absorption spectrum, as well as quantized energy levels. Though these tiny bits that make up all mater are not sentiently aware, they are individually unique and collectively fundamentally important. We fit into this strange matrix somehow, and while I am not certain of any specific way that is true, I am spiritually bound to the idea that we are strange and wonderful scientific, mystical beings—formed in the image of a creator, inadvertent fulfillers of our own creative prophecies. Our energy exists beyond measure, beyond complete understanding. But the nature of it is unsatisfactorily defined. Although we can’t use superconducting magnets to accelerate hadrons of conscious entities towards each other, we can pay close attention to the many ways in which our mind interacts with other consciousnesses.

Word salad

An integration of images & ideas

Foreword

Everything is Energy

What it Means to Be Conscious (As We Know It)

Energy and “Consciousness”

Fifth Fundamental Force of Conscience

More reading: For those of you can’t help digging deeper.