Thomas Campbell answers the question, “What Is Consciousness”. He is a physicist, lecturer, and author of the My Big TOE (Theory of Everything) trilogy. In the books, he discusses the origins of consciousness and brings together science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics, mind and matter, purpose and meaning, as well as the normal and the paranormal. The writings are based on the simulation argument, which takes the position that reality is both virtual and subjective. He is here to answer the question,”What Is Consciousness?”.

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Website: www.tomcampbell.info
Website: www.my-big-toe.com
Website: www.mbtevent.com
Youtube: Tom Campbell
Nonprofit Org: CUSAC : Tom Campbell's Center for the Unification of Science And Consciousness
Book: My Big Toe: Book 3 of a Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics, and Metaphysics: Inner Workings by Tom Campbell

Thoughts on Breathing

I don't really put any focus on the breathing at all, all that stuff just happens by itself. You know, when I was meditating, I didn't use the breathing type of meditation, I used the mantra type. But I don't say mantras anymore and I don't need to; I can be in a meditation state in an instant. It's the same with the breathing breath, just like a mantra is used. Because it fills your mind with something that's non-operable. By non-operable, I mean, it's nothing that you're going to think about, oh, I'm breathing in, I'm breathing out, you know, that just happens automatically, you don't have to think about it.
The mantra is a word that doesn't mean anything in particular, you know, it's a word that has kind of a resonant ending, has a little vibration to it. But other than that, any sound will do as well as any other sound. I know, sometimes people sell magic sounds, or meditation monitors and stuff, but any sound will do just as well.
You use that sound of the mantra to replace thoughts that come into your head. So the mantra kind of fills up your mind space and crowds the thought out. The same with the breathing; when you take your deep breath, you're aware of being in a relaxed state, and you focus on being in touch with everything.
Eventually, you don't need to be focused on your breath or anything else. You just live in that state all the time. So I don't do any kind of breathing exercises or anything.

Thoughts About God

Interestingly enough, I was at a Unitarian Church, giving a program there. That church was just the venue, they had a less expensive room to rent than anybody else. And there were two theologians there that went along with that church.
They were there while I was giving my talk and I asked them, I said, you two both have PhDs in theology, tell me, what are the attributes of God? Now, I said, I don't want dogma, I just want the general, what are the attributes of God. And this was a Unity Church, so they're into a little less dogma in that organization.
So they spent a little bit of time in a conference talking to each other for about a minute or so and they came up with this list of attributes of God. And the reason I asked is, I compared that list to the attributes of the larger consciousness system. And I thought, I wonder how they're going to compare. And as it turned out, there was a one for one. Everything they had on their list was also an attribute of the larger consciousness system.
[They said] it's perfect, all-knowing, knows everything all the time. It's Supernatural. It's infinite. And well, my larger conscious system is not infinite. It's a natural system, not a supernatural system. Everything is a part of it. But it's not necessarily aware of everything all the time, it has to focus its attention on things. And it can be aware of a whole lot more than I can because it's got a lot bigger mind than I have.
But it's also limited in that its number of bits is limited, it's finite. So it has to be efficient, in the way it does things. You can't just do things sloppily, if it's going to make a simulation, it's got to do that in an efficient way. It has constraints. It has a boundary, what's outside that boundary, have no idea. And we can't know because we're in it, we're conscious.
We can't see an experience outside of what we are, you know? Yes, a lot of people are very religious, or at least they describe themselves as very religious. That also, like my Big TOE, they're not incompatible. I expected them to be incompatible because of my brush with religion had mostly been very dogmatic.
But I found out that there are lots of people as individuals, they may belong to dogmatic religion, but they're not dogmatic at all. They've outgrown that. They don't have to go there, the details don't matter. Then they see the big picture. It's about being kind and caring about love. They have all the big picture stuff. And, you know, they're just not that interested in the details that aren't important to them. So in that sense, the larger consciousness system is the source of everything else.

Advice for People Who Love to Study

I was always very slow at almost everything, because I just rejected memorization. Memorizing how to get the right answers to me did not make sense.
When I got to graduate school, I was a little envious of the guys that could write the right answer down in a few minutes, because I couldn't do that.
After talking with them, I found out that they were envious of me because I could solve the problems that they couldn't [solve]. [For] the problems that they hadn't learned a methodology to get the right answer, they were stuck. Yeah. And I wasn't stuck. But I was very slow, and they weren't. They were very fast.
So it had its advantages and disadvantages. It has to make sense, has to be derived from the bottom up, otherwise it's just not even worth doing it. So if your son's like that, then I'd tell him to persevere and just keep doing it. Don't learn to ‘Plugin' any more than you have to to get a decent grade. And if it doesn't make sense, then you don't understand it yet.

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