Simulation: The Mode of Evolution in Life - Part-2

Naga Ananthachandra Narayana

Engineering Director, International Automotive Components, Southfield, MI, US

10.               Computer Aided Engineering

As the technology exploded, the humans realized the impending hurdle to the growth – their own cognitive limits and limitations! Their internal mechanism seems to be crippled to boost their evolutionary ambitions in the recent past. Externalization of the ideas into experiments in the real world turned inward to explore potentials and possibilities assimilating the internal mechanism into an external medium. The mental functions are closely observed in order to develop algorithms to translate the same into a language that a machine could understand and function in close heels with the mind. The mental models and algorithms that dictate the internal simulations were externalized through complex mathematical formulations to tune an integral system of physical attributes – now we call as “computer” – into their mental replica. As we learned how we can simulate fabrication of such gigantic machinery within such virtual environment, even test them and optimize their design for best performance without even making one in real, the new technology has provided a cutting edge to our skills of simulation by providing a platform to experiment directly on our ideas and refine the same with much more rigor, precision and accuracy.

With the invention of external media of knowledge and intelligence, the conscious simulation has evolved into a bimodal operation from its traditional unimodal operation. The brain has evolved to internalize external information into its complex mental models over millenniums in order to execute the bodily functions in much more precision and accuracy in-line with the nature in order to maximize the benefits from the same. The computers are now being developed over a century to externalize the very functionality of the brain and its cognitive associates into algorithms that transform the same functionalities into our associate machinery to perform similar cognitive tasks with much greater scale, pace and precision. Till now, the ideas were externalized directly into action. But now, our ideas are often externalized into their own workshops in our artificial cognitive domains for further enhancement and testing. We are depending on such externalized intelligence to directly execute our intended tasks even in the physical realms in order to retain the precision and accuracy achieved in our virtual studios.

Today, not only our engineering activities but almost all our daily activities are actively enhanced with our extended modes of information, knowledge and intelligence. Today, the computers have become so much part of our very thought process, we seem to refuse anything worthy as being called simulation unless it happens in a computer! Even though the acronym CAE for Computer Aided Engineering is used for a fractional application of engineering with mathematical process called finite element analysis, today there is no engineering that is not aided by computers – our extended cognitive partners – directly or indirectly!

The importance to discrete models is in exponential rise with the invention of digital extension of human cognitive schema, the computers, as they are built on a basic principle of a switch with a binary sense of appreciation in close association with its binary mode of operation. As long as we can abstract a set of binary commands, however complexly networked, we should be able to operate a network of such switches however complexly integrated in real. However, a discrete model would be useless unless it replicates the continuum behavior that still remains the substratum of our very existence. The brain integrates the bits and pieces of the sensorial signals it receives with its memory, experience and intuition into its analogous appreciation of the world. However, the technology today is quite primitive to inculcate such organic qualities into the inorganic media that are adopted to absorb the binary codes to enact our physical behavior. Evolution would not stop at any hurdle; it would always invent to circumvent the same.

Our minds, being incapable of keeping up with the continuity of life, have developed a discrete appreciation of the world around in chunks of facts and images. No mind can understand anything in its absolute entirety however finite and well defined the object could be within its spectrum of sensitivity. Of course, it is almost crippled to appreciate anything outside its cognitive reach except for imagining the same with interpolations and extrapolations. The mind builds its knowledge into wider and deeper levels by building such chunks in a seamless grid integrated with its interpolative intuition and extrapolative imagination. In a way, we do live in a virtual mesh not only within our conscious bounds but also across the entire human grid connecting such individual cavities of consciousness through the extensive grid of commutation and communication we have built over eons of our past.

Thanks to the mathematical appreciation we are able to abstract for explaining the physical phenomena in the world we live, we are able to translate the continuum conditions into explicit constraints in our discrete models so that they would preserve the continuity in the functions they depict and contiguity in the dominion they represent so that their simulation would replicate the physical characteristics of the dominion as well as functionalities as closely as possible. The very concept of grids the mind works with is projected into its digital algorithms integrating the dominion of interest as a grid of discrete pieces collaged contiguously and imposing the continuity in the functionalities of the dominion across these pieces explicitly adhering to the digitized versions of the mathematical principles that represent such physical phenomena in the real world.

The acronym CAE is popularly applied to this activity of digitizing a continuum as a grid of finite elements collaged contiguously, developing mathematical fields connecting such pieces ensuring a piecewise continuity in the functionality of their assembly as a whole and translating the entire algorithm into a computer to simulate the dominion with its prescribed functionalities for much greater and subtler scrutiny. The method of such mathematical idealization is often called Finite Element Method or FEM and its many variations of its own depending on the fluidity or solidity of the dominion of interest. The power of scrutiny we gain from such computer aided simulations enhances our mathematical appreciation of diverse dominions under diverse conditions for deriving an optimal design combination of the dominion and its environment most effectively before fabricating and deploying the same physically. The fundamental principle of engineering – differential discretization of continuum for extracting subtler appreciation at its elemental stretch and integral unification of such elemental appreciation for a holistic appreciation of the continuum – remains the core principle for its extension into computers as well.

In spite of the excellence we have achieved with digital solutions, we cannot forget that all such models are designed from their “ideal” prototypes. The consciousness ought to connect itself to the physical world it always believes to assimilate for itself in order to sustain its own simulation. Accordingly, the essence of all its digital models are rooted in their physical prototypes that our consciousness is attempting to appreciate for its own benefits. The success of conscious evolution is in its obsession for correlating its models and simulations with the physical realities constantly through the same cognitive apparatus it senses its world in the first place. Such psycho-physical correlation has been the basis for its confidence in steering itself in the world it perceives. The same obsession ought to be passed onto its own virtual replica as well while it abstracts the physics into its cognitive model and programs the same into a digital model that its virtual replica can replicate! 

Irrespective of whether the solution is sought within the organic conscious domain or through its externalized virtual studios, the simulative appreciation of existence grows out from its physical substratum into its cognitive realms. All the cognitive models that are abstracted into algorithms churning digital solutions in a computer are intended to be deployed back in its physical realms with precision and accuracy. As a result, both complexity of the models and algorithms as well as the potential for gaps and overlaps in the process increase exponentially. But the conscious agenda has never changed. It is still expecting to succeed in its experiments to grow closer to the existential realities in its appreciation as well as in its operations enhancing the life prospects of the dominion it happens to steer. The more layers of abstraction it brings, more potential it gains to progress in its agenda. At the same time, it ought to face more uncertainties in its ventures as the very abstractions could potentially create more formidable gaps in their execution demanding much more stringent schema of correlation across the layers of its abstraction bridging all such potential gaps. With the advent of extending itself into external mechanisms, the eternal agenda of continuous learning the consciousness has been evolving with has taken a much steeper trend in the human psyche now than ever.

The spurt of technology owes its success to its adherence to the digital advancements integrated into their physical implementation. Computer aided engineering has provided a leap in human reach to amass knowledge as well as the comforts that the knowledge brings in our lives. The digital composition has been embraced for its universality in representing anything from a generic perspective enabling us to model anything that we see in terms of the same universal building blocks. At the same time, as engineers, we never close our eyes to a bigger picture. True engineering is in integration of the pieces of our understanding to synergize a holistic appreciation of the problem on hand. Such symbiotic application of digital modeling, digital-analogous simulation and analogous appreciation of the application remains the key to any successful engineering activity.

The sense of individuality is so closely knit into the conscious presence that the brain takes over the rest of the body. The life built on populations of such individuals would naturally boost the emotion in order to promote itself across the population. Thanks to the enhanced data storage and processing capabilities we can achieve through those little chips has almost pushed our brains into their obsolescence particularly when it comes to putting together a complex model and executing the same with utmost precision and efficiency. But, yet the domain of holistic appreciation seems to remain in our brains. It is still the human indigenousness that is evolving this hardware capability. More importantly, it is the human genius that turns all the numbers crunched into sensible interpretations into our cognitive as well as physical models in order to achieve engineering excellence. Therefore, it is still “computer aided engineering”, not “computerized engineering”! In other words, it is still the human cognitive simulation that drives the engineering in spite of drawing enormous help from the computerized simulations.

As a result, consciously engineered simulations have become the most dominant mode of our existence and medium for our communion to the extent that we cannot even sense ourselves without one or the other conscious simulation constantly running in our brains. The simulative dominance naturally extends in our cognitive extensions as well. So many of our daily activities are now engineered through computers that the entire humanity might crash into a screeching halt if the computers are taken away from their network today. Computers dominate almost all our activities on this planet today. The automotives running on the road, the airplanes flying in the sky, the ships floating in the oceans, our economies governed electronic banking and stock markets, the cell phones connecting us across the globe, the GPS guiding our commutation constantly, the TVs entertaining us at home, the equipments helping us stretch and exercise in a gym, the internet that has created an alter dominion of existence and knowledge catering to almost all our needs … computers are integrated into almost every facet of our living today.

Thanks to the digital evolution of the mode of conscious simulation, we have grown from our primitive existence similar to our fellow beings on this planet into the most sophisticated mode of living. Thanks to our engineering skills and their digital transformation, we have grown from stone age into space age; we have taken a leap with artificial wings deep into the sky from leaping on our limbs over the ground surface; locally diffused hearsay has grown into globally instant authentic information; our economy has grown from fish markets into stock markets; it is hard to identify any appliance or act of life that is not virtually assisted directly or indirectly in human life on this planet.

Thanks to the network of computers and the enhanced intelligence that run through the same, the globe we live in has shrunk, even the galaxies have shrunk, rather the entire universe is shrinking, captive within such virtual models today! At least the minds that behold such ideas believe so!! The confidence on our digital invention is so much that we can easily claim to transform anything that our mind analytically conceives into a virtual apparatus to execute the same. It is just a matter of time, it seems, that the rest of the conscious faculties could also be virtualized and mapped into artificial supplements!

Extended physical and cognitive powers gained over centuries of conscious evolution of life have emboldened the human consciousness to dream and work toward its own potential extension beyond mortal limits of the perishable bodies it is forced to live with. The urge for possessing alter-biological means to extend its mortal realms into relatively immortal realms is probably as ancient as the life itself. The success we have seen in our efforts to break our mortal boundaries in our physical and cognitive activities through our own inventions has surfaced our another ancient dream of seeking alter-sentient options so that our conscious sense of being could be transferred to our inventions. Many menial jobs that the humans had to execute are now automated removing human labor. Our world is now abundantly populated not only with our own population but with much more gadgets that we make. Our economy which has been the backbone of or very survival on this planet is now deeply rooted in our intelligent inorganic partners enabling self-guided production and marketing as well as self-driven carriers and delivery of the produce.

The ambition to understand the cosmos of life is renewed with the new gained vigor from our success to transfer our knowhow into our creations with the new found techniques and technologies of concurrent internalization and externalization of ideas. The quality of artificial intelligence that started with superior number crunching is rapidly transforming to absorb more and more qualities of human consciousness that remains the foundation for our decision making abilities in an ambitious agenda of exceeding the human consciousness in its holistic sense. We have succeeded in transforming our algorithmic strategies of problem solving and decision making into many of our machinery by embedding such algorithms into their processing units. We are now dreaming of making them develop deep learning capabilities such as creating fundamental thoughts and playing them in tune with the circumstances just like our thought process works. We are dabbling with ideas to make them compose music and create art, as intuitively and imaginatively as we do, based on their deep learning abilities. The era of Stan Lee fantasizing on supra-human existence is now graduated into a more realistic breed of minds like Elon Musk with renewed rigor and vigor to achieve the targets of artificial intelligence we had dropped as unrealistic just couple of decades back. Dreamers will continue to dream as wildly as they can. It is the engineers who transform the same into this world as realistically as possible.

BUT ... the growth of organic-assisted inorganic intelligence embedded in artificially intelligent gadgets assisting us at home, on road and at our work has its own baggage in the growth of organic dependence on inorganic means and intelligence. Even though we appear to be super smart in our inventions, we seem to constantly shrink into dumber beings incapable of surviving without active support from our own inventions.

11.               Conscious Blind Spots

Continuous learning is the engine that drives the conscious evolution constantly. As awareness of potential for knowledge in the unknown drives it to explore newer paths and strategies, awareness of potential for ignorance in the known drives it to correlate and consolidate its current state with physical reality. But, no matter how much it grows, human knowledge cannot be free of embedded pockets of ignorance while being completely encapsulated by ignorance of unknowns. It cannot exceed the physiological bounds of the human cognitive apparatus that processes the same. Moreover, most of its growth is in the mental extrapolations of few brilliant brains. No matter how acute and detailed a mind could ever be, it can never consider all the details and possibilities. Therefore, all such mental projections and hence the derivative knowledge suffer blind spots of their own in terms of factors not considered.

Evolution is a continuous learning process. Sure, we evolve as we learn. But we ought to learn more to appreciate the very evolution as its growth exposes additional unknown frontiers and throws in many uncertainties into its arena. The very evolution exposes many blind spots, even blind sight, in our vision compelling us to learn more for mitigating the same. As we enhance our sight to clear our current blind spots and see more, the newer dominions of our sight throws in its own blind spots of unknown back into our vision. Evolution is a constant struggle to clear the blind spots as they rise in our understanding helping us navigate into the hives of unknowns thus opened. As we resolve the blind spots and sight, we evolve further developing newer blind spots and blind sight. Thus, evolution is naturally infested with a continuous accumulation of ignorance in its continuous pursuit of knowledge!

Conscious progression has been like driving a car in unknown territories and terrains. A car comes with its own blind spots embedded in its design with an active spectrum of vision, passive indicators and opaque spots. In spite of excellent built-in active computer-aided engineering, a car cannot be completely transparent since opaque enclosure is inevitable to sustain its multi-functional routine. It is not just the car. Even the driver is born with very similar limitations of blind spots and sight in spite of evolving with an excellent cognitive apparatus. We cannot have simultaneous 360 degree vision. We can only cover a narrow sector in one direction at a time. Even that loses its clarity beyond some distance. On top of the physiological limitations we are born with, we have developed spots of blindness in our own instincts and tendencies. Our focus instinctively remains riveted to our forward vision making us less attentive to other directions. Parallel simulations that we entertain in our mind remain a much harder blind spot as they often run in direct conflict with the main simulation in progress, the driving.

Therefore, the consciousness as well as the body it happens to drive is bound to be limited in depth as well as clarity of the knowledge it gains in spite of its seemingly expansive potential to learn. The body is limited by its own physiological reach and fatigue while the consciousness is limited by its own distractions apart from being acutely dependent on its body’s skills and attention. Often distraction is a necessary evil to sustain a conscious focus as it often stimulates the mind to remain alert! Without distraction, conscious focus slips into sleep. It needs to be stirred with constant perturbations in order to be awake. But, the focus gets shifted to something else other than the intended target with overplayed distraction! The Ping-Pong between focus and distraction remains essential to resolve an endless chain of blind spots and sights the driver gets into while the very game keeps throwing in its own blind spots and sights in its path. Thus simulative blind spots keep inculcating conscious deviations from physical realities as the consciousness evolves into higher realms of awareness of physical intricacies. In a way evolution of life has been a constant jugglery between gaining and losing its correlation amidst its growing population with its inherent elemental existence as well as with its cosmic presence.

Existence has been evolving into various modes and layers of its material-ethereal compositions over ages. It always builds its new modes and layers over its pre-existing ones. Its fundamental agenda in every evolution – to protect and promote its prior forms and modes – remains unadulterated and undiluted. Existence has been tuning its experiments to perfect its own dynamic integrity perpetually. For example, dynamic flow of material and energy has been its most fundamental mode from general perspective. One may even refine this appreciation to its subtler modes and forms in terms of particular, quantum and string formulations. In fact the very flow of matter and energy that it has set itself with is to sustain its own subtler forms and modes, however they could be, in absolute balance. No matter how its own elements act and react with each other, they all do what they do only to sustain its balanced flow through its entire dominion. No matter how the elements simulate themselves into biological colonies in various forms through various modes, their fundamental chemistry remains the same. No matter how the organs function, their biological instincts remain as they are. No matter what we think and how we try to enact the same, the organic agenda of living remains the same all through the body that hosts the very thinker.

In fact, every evolution that existence has sought from its primordial existence in its subtle elemental forms to its conscious existence in a sentient being such as a human, is to protect and promote its own balance in the most optimal way. Therefore, there is a built in pre-requisite to all its simulations to serve this fundamental agenda – protect and promote their substratum! The sentient simulations that we think we are cannot be an exception to this either. The way the existence has been realizing its agenda is to set a sense of perturbation in its simulations until they satisfy the agenda they are born with. The more advanced its evolution becomes, the more intense the perturbations are sensed within the simulations.

It is this sensitivity a simulation is generated with that relates it to the rest of the existence within which it is played; correlate its own course with respect to the sense of balance it receives from the rest of existence constantly; and morph its own existence perpetually to protect and promote the existential agenda it is released with. The more conscious the simulation has attained, the more intense this process of relation and correlation becomes. Such compulsion has become an emotional stipulation to the conscious simulations. As soon as the balance is lost in its primordial flow, its reflection in cellular existence is perturbed generating pulses of pain radiating into the conscious mind. The perturbed mind is programmed not to seek rest till such signals stop pulsating disturbing its balance. The perturbed mind generates pulses in turn directing the whole body to seek solution for the pain it is reported with. Existential flow perturbs its homeostasis only to attain the same in return as the perturbations traverse through its biological and conscious loops of simulations in order to sustain a sense of life through the very dominion that these loops stretch into.

The existential simulations work or fail perfectly on their own even though its visionary builds its own blind spot not to acknowledge the same in poise. As the existence emotes its sense of being in order to sustain its simulative loops of balancing itself, the very sense remains burdened with a baggage of identity that brews the emotional inertia and ignorance constantly. The conscious element is empowered with a power of perception, abstraction and projection in order to coordinate all its simulations in line with the existential flow that feeds it in order to protect and promote its existential dominion. Its own anticipative power becomes its core paranoia as its emotional insistence to exist seems to constantly shake at its very base as the very same existential flow that feeds it constantly does also erode its empire at the same time! It remains constantly troubled with a deep sense of a potential lack of correlation and its consequences on the vital existence that it is directed to protect and promote within its jurisdiction. As the paranoia sets it to snowball on its own anticipatory doubts, it starts imagining its own potential blind spots in its path suddenly!

It instinctively knows the impersonal wrath of the existential flow its feeds upon. It knows how it would be absorbed back into the flow mercilessly the moment it loses its vision of the same. Its vision of the vital flow of life is deeply hinged upon its ability to relate and correlate with the constant changes in its own flow as well as in its surroundings that pass by. If there is no correlation, its understanding of this vital flow might be lost leading to potential damage to its dominion and might even prove fatal to its own image.  Therefore, it attempts to hypothesize all its relations with its own dominion as well as that of such a body with its environment in order to tune its correlation with the physical world constantly. It builds many models on its relations with the existence in order to strike a plan of action that correlates the best to its core agenda of self protection and self promotion.

The deeper it dives into the maze of relations it is related with, the more enigmatic its appreciation of existence and hence all its relations would grow. The reason it cannot break through its enigmatic blind spot in its existential pursuits is the blind spot that a simulation is released with, in the first place. A candle cannot avoid its own shadow no matter how brightly it illuminates the entire room. In order to empower a simulation to come up with its best solution, existence empowers every simulation with a sense of sovereignty. This sense of sovereignty freezes into an individual identity as the simulation refines itself into a conscious one! The sense of identity generates a sense of cessation of simulation from the rest of the world. At times, an individual develops notions contrary to the very existential agenda as the individualization seeks its cocoon. It sets a notion within the simulation that the world is simulated for this simulation rather than this simulation being set out to play within the simulation of the world! It is this blind spot that grows as inertia in the simulation reinforcing its ill-conceived self-sovereignty. On the other hand, the same blind spot spreads as ignorance that the whole existence is there to promote this inertia in the simulation! The same blind spot is reflected in all the anticipatory models that it makes on its relations with its world. As the blind spot spreads in both ends, it becomes blind sight crippling the fellow further!

Another blind spot for conscious simulation is in its power to “own” simulations that are nested within it. The inertial and organic simulations let their siblings and offspring nest naturally in order to permeate balance across their worlds. But, a conscious simulation being empowered to actively direct simulations often misleads itself with a belief of “owning” such nested simulations. It just fragments the continuous permeation of existential agenda through its own node into all such nested nodes. In spite of being a “sentient” origin for many such simulations, it is the subconscious existential agenda that still holds the conscious simulation where it stands. It is the same agenda that filters itself through the conscious node into all other nodes it happens to “create” and “control”. Again it is the individualization that happens within such a conscious node that fractures its merger in the existential continuum. It is this individual fragmentation it believes in that breaks its appreciation of all the relations that are sustaining its very existence. It is this glaring ignorance that unsettles the fellow into constant sense of insecurity throwing the conscious being into a constant jugglery between the relations and correlations to find a match with its own expectations rather than with the physical reality. The struggle is naturally reflected in all the models and simulations that the human consciousness has amassed all through it’s genetic as well as mimetic network today.

There is a fundamental difference between natural and conscious iterations. The elemental corrections have no bias. The cosmic corrections neither show any bias. They both have no agenda other than preserving a collective balance in their pools of existence. It is the conscious simulation that is torn in dichotomy. It has to abide by the elemental laws and conform to the cosmic flow no matter what. Yet it has to sustain an individual at its non-existent juncture juxtaposed as an independent player right amidst the natural setup that remains absolutely apathetic to any individual agenda! The conscious knowledge grows through an insistent claim of individualization. The same avenue to knowledge forms a blockade to its self awareness at its core. The very claim builds a notional cocoon of sovereign existence in its appreciation, churning a belief of individual playing with the rest contrary to the reality of being fused in the elemental flow of cosmos. 

A conscious being is therefore compelled to stimulate itself amidst its world with a specific agenda – to preserve and promote the very sense of being. Therefore, its ignorance of individualization is made arrogant to discard all hints and suggestions contrary to the belief. It is therefore compelled to tweak its simulations, often contrary to the natural ones, so that it can keep running with its natural agenda of individualization. As a result, as much knowledge as it can gain through its individualized interactions with the world, so much prejudice also gravitates around its individual pride. Individual pride and prejudice remain the seeds for all its blind spots. There are neither such blind spots nor is there any room for apology in nature as such. Elemental as well as cosmic simulations do not have such blind spots since the whole gamut as well as its gambit is purely governed by the universal laws of mutual association permeated through its essence. Naturally, there is no room for error and hence no need for correlation in nature. A conscious simulation, torn with its individualized agenda, is compelled to constantly correlate itself with nature in order to remain “sane” since its personal agenda drags it away from natural reality constantly.

It is the conscious model that depends on the notion of error as it is compelled to deviate from natural ways in its dichotomy of sustaining an individualized identity amidst the natural odds all around. In order to offset its handicap, it has developed a sense of urgency to correlate its actions with its natural surroundings constantly. The foreseen repercussions of its potential errors keep it alert against potential failures in its mission. Its obsession for “correctness” and “consistency” in its model to accommodate the natural compatibility and continuity that governs the physical world is rooted in its fundamental agenda of deriving particular sense from its general pool.

Therefore, a conscious being ought to constantly relate and correlate with its world in order to manage the gaps generated by the emotional fracture it triggers at the very point of individualization. Aligning the conscious behavior to natural phenomena has been the core agenda in its learning curve all through its evolution! But, the very obsession often takes blind turns through its own blind spots developing convoluted notions departing from the natural realities further as it turns itself into paranoia! Its own ignorant as well as intellectual detours from its natural roots remain the sole hurdle for a conscious model to often miss the natural balance it is always absorbed in.

12.               Continuous Learning – Correlation and Correction

Nature has no schema for carrying obsolete characteristics. Mimetic extinction is as real as genetic extinction in nature. There are no carriers to carry useless knowledge in a social population just like there are no carriers to continue failed survival traits in a genetic pool. Just like the genes seek extinction when their host fails to pass them onto a progeny, memes too seek extinction as their host fails to pass them to a prodigy. Thus knowledge flourishes only as long as its recipients see its usefulness and perishes as it slips into obsolescence. Knowledge becomes useless to a population when it becomes redundant to the growing awareness of the population as well as when the population becomes ignorant of the true values it happens to carry. As the memes become redundant to our common sense, they lose their significance and are lost into triviality. As the population grows ignorant on a body of knowledge, it is trivialized to be a myth if not lost completely. Mimetic survival of knowledge is rooted in constant correlation that revises the population’s awareness of the knowledge in order to keep it relevant and even grow into realms of higher significance and usefulness to the society to keep itself in demand. Therefore, ignorance is the peril and correlation is the boost for mimetic survival and growth of any body of knowledge. 

Our idea of simulation is always two-pronged – understanding and application. We simulate to appreciate the nature better. Very few humans are crazy enough to limit their aspiration to mere appreciation of the nature. Majority of us truly do not care what nature is. What all of us really care is what nature can do to us, nay for us. We are obliged to the appreciation part only because we are compelled to actualize the useful part for ourselves. If we do not understand horse, how can we make it run for us? If we do not understand dogs, how can we make them hunt for us? If we cannot understand aerodynamics, how can we fly in the sky like the birds? If we do not understand the space dynamics, how can ever explore the space beyond? If we do not understand the energy trapped in sunlight, how can we transform it into electricity for our daily use? Therefore, our intellectual assimilation focuses so much on appreciation of the nature around so that we can align ourselves with its flow in order to excavate the most from its unexplored abundance. The bottom line for us has always been the treasure that we can excavate out of the knowledge we explore.

In order to reap the fruits of our understanding, we need to engineer our knowledge back to align ourselves with the resources that we understand and bargain with. Again, the only tool we have to achieve anything is simulation and the only mode for adopting the same for our advantage is correlation. Correlation has been the mode of evolution of our scientific and engineering skills and continues to be more important than ever as science and engineering keep breaking their barriers of complexity and have been growing into exponentially increasing complexities in the process. We simulate our ideas, tune them with active correlation with physical reality and perfect them for maximizing the bounty from the nature for our own welfare in personal scale as well as in industrial scale on a day-to-day basis.

Ignorance in any conscious simulation is rooted in its self-imagined isolation from the rest of the network! Every simulation is embedded in a universal grid of simulation stretching into the subtlest pockets of existence concurrently. No simulation can ever stand on its own! It receives its synergy from its environment and it feeds its response into the same environment back. It can neither hold anything to itself; nor can it hold itself without the support that it draws from its universal network. So is any engineering simulation. So is any computer-aided simulation. Every simulation is implicitly related to its base. Therefore, an explicit appreciation of its correlation to its base is essential to understand its response to the inputs it receives in right perspectives.

Error of execution remains inherent in the conscious evolution as emergence of blind spots remains a natural byproduct of conscious progression in its relentless effort to sustain personalized experience and knowledge put into collective evolution. It is but natural that the evolution is plagued with potential divergence from its base if not moderated and tuned with its existential roots continuously. Continuous learning alone can steer the conscious evolution in balance well within the existential flood without letting the knowledge acquired diverge away into its obsolescence.

Consciousness follows pretty much the same principles as its existential basis while building its confidence and the resulting knowledgebase. It always attempts to correlate its new territories of knowledge with its established pieces of knowledge it has been established with. Constant correlation with its relatively elemental modes is the path to gain similar confidence in the newer modes it evolves into. Often, the very growth separates an evolutionary mode from the elemental modes that remain deep beneath many layers in between. Knowledge diverges when misled by its obsession on correlating itself with its immediate substratum without understanding the basis for such substratum. At times, deeper dives are demanded for establishing much deeper correlation.

The risk of diverging from natural realities swell as we seek more layers of simulation in order to churn more options offering more choices for us to make. The potential for gaps between our assimilated reality and the physical reality we attempt to emulate also increases accordingly. The natural elements show no gap in their appreciation and behavior as they respond to their current states spontaneously e.g. hydrogen and oxygen burn to produce water as soon as their association finds an opportunity to expel the extra energy stored in their union. When choice is unique, understanding and execution converge with natural reality. But, when choices are many, the two may not meet each other in balance and often tend to diverge from the natural reality by their own mutual inconsistencies!

Correlation is the only way existence can achieve its balance at its infinitesimal, finite as well as infinite presence. In its primitive modes of inertial and organic simulations, correlation happens passively. However, its conscious mode conducts the same actively. But, all active correlations are deeply rooted in passive correlations since the very conscious simulation remains deeply rooted in its own primordial basis deep within the existential layers. Therefore, as engineers we should never make a mistake of isolating our simulative knowledge from its physical base. Our simulative skills and expertise are developed only to be applied eventually on the physical realms for our benefit. Therefore, the digital solutions should be effectively mapped into physical domain in order to relate the digital findings and apply the same on physical models with confidence and precision.

Therefore, it is of paramount importance to observe the physical reactions to the digital inputs in contrast with the digital response constantly in line with the correlative traits our very mode of knowledge has evolved with. If any conscious being refuses to abide with these fundamental diktats of the nature, the very genetic characteristics are eliminated from the pool as it floods into next generations. The law of nature is extremely simple and clear for everything including the sentient beings it nurtures. All the traits that are aligned with its elemental flow will survive and pass into the generations to come by. All the traits that run contrary to its principles are simply meted out from its genetic pool forever.

It is not by accident that the human acumen is able to achieve what it has today and will continue to achieve in the years to roll by. It is the concerted effort of the bolero that the life has been playing in its conscious evolution on this planet that has resulted in the collective conscious awareness that wraps this planet today. No single human being can ever take credit for anything more than just being an instrument in this massive evolution. Life has been building its instruments and players with its elemental ingredients to their own perfections in order to let the bolero evolve as freely as possible; no constraints from within and no restraints from around. Every instrument is played to its tunes and to its perfection in the bolero impartially. No matter which instrument lasts how long, the bolero continues; not only continuing at its core but also grows into newer realms constantly. Every element responds to its tunes spontaneously just like the strings and diaphragms of those instruments on the stage. Every being resonates with its own collective elemental synergy just like those instruments responding to the tweaks and beats of those players. Every community generates their own collective songs that remain fused into the flow of the bolero just like those groups of instrumentalists and vocalists on the stage.

The conductor remains the very nature that runs through them all not letting a single note go out of tune anywhere anytime. Absolute correlation remains the sole reality everywhere. Lack of correlation remains a mere notion in a player as if one can play a note of one’s own choice independent of the bolero. The bolero absorbs all such attempts into its all-inclusive harmony anyway. It could absorb them into its active tunes or into its passive silence. Either way, no simulative attempt can ever stay outside its cosmic flow. And yet, every player, every instrument and every note learn to adapt themselves into the bolero continuously as they let themselves play with and played with the very flow of the bolero. Continuous learning has been the only mode for every being to stay in tune with the universal bolero that continues eternally. And, ones who can’t tune into the flow are just flushed into the very flow to re-emerge in variant forms to sustain the bolero as it progresses. Recycling the resources has been the sole mode to sustain such eternal continuum being played through innumerable bits and pieces all across its stretch. No simulation is an exception to the laws of existence – simulations continue to run as long as they can stay in tune with the flow and are recycled through the very flow into variant re-simulations when they cannot keep their pace in tune with the flow.

Rise of sentience within insentient dominion has resulted in a sense of multi-layered and multi-faceted evolution in simulation and in a sense of life with similar complexities. A conscious simulation played within such psycho-physical complex would naturally conceive itself to have been evolved from a primitive elemental form into its most matured form graduating through schools of existential, experiential and cognitive phases. But the entire complex remains concurrent in real, each being nested in the others and all remaining absolutely inseparable from each other. In fact, one could imagine each individual conscious dominion to be extracted from its relatively broader bases in its cognitive, experiential and existential substrata with the sense of being rested at the apex of the pyramid. The entire pyramid bubbles out from the cosmic elemental flow as the elements of life recycle through the same constantly just like a vortex would take form well within a stream as the water flows around obstacles beneath. The quartet continues to play as long as it can stay in tune with the vital flow that permeates it constantly. Therefore, the elemental vital code seems to dictate the entire quartet including the sense of being that gets to enjoy the vital play as long as the flow preserves the quartet’s integrity and synergy.

An individual player in the game of life cannot perceive oneself as an independent entity simulating the rest of the world for one’s own benefit even though there is some reality in the notion. Every player is also simultaneously played out by many others. As one feels simulating a world for oneself, the fellow is being simulated by many others as ingredient for their own conceived worlds! The universal simulation retains its absolute integrity with no gaps or overlaps anywhere in spite of being so intricately cross-nested amongst its infinite population. So abundant and elastic is its space; and so empathetic and plastic is its dominion. Every member of its population ought to retain similar elasticity as well as plasticity in order to remain in its infinite grid. Every being should be elastic enough to stretch and shrink itself to stay intact in the grid. Every being should be plastic enough to morph oneself to stay as a grid point as it is flooded in its universal flow. The only way to retain such elastic-plastic suppleness is through constant correlation with the rest with active self-correction to achieve the same. The only way to sustain such constant correlation-correction cycles is through continuous learning of one’s own dynamism in relation with the dynamics of the rest.

Even though the learning has always been to preserve and promote individuals and the communions of their choice, the innate motto for learning has been seeking a resolution to attain the poise of universal presence well within the individual grids. An obvious direction to achieve this relief most effectively is to realize how every individual is in fact absolutely dissolved in that very poise and remind oneself to relish the same irrespective of how the conceived individual dominion appears to be tossed around well within its constantly variant immediate neighborhood all the time. But, such philosophical purport does not seem to jive well with most of the population that sprawls the surface of this planet. The entire earthen knowledge seems to hone on building its base on how to preserve and promote individual life forms rather than letting them feel dispersed in its continuum. It is no wonder that the same instinct has evolved into scientific inquiry amongst the humans. Human quest has always been to extract the secrets of the elemental flow that makes and keeps these individual beings and use the same to preserve and promote the sense of living well within the individual reach.

Once the human consciousness turned its attention to science, its experimental quest to understand the elemental subtleties of existence changed the drapes of conscious simulation completely. When the conscious simulation attained skills to create and operate machines that were “larger than life” as well as capable of achieving “much larger than life” feats that human cannot even dream of, the vision was considered not worthy of a note unless it could assimilate its internal simulation on the external world directly. Indeed, the human acumen has achieved transferring its many ideological dreams into physical realities successfully over years now. The machines demonstrated much faster, stronger as well as skillful execution of such ideas thus conceived mentally. The gaps and overlaps faced in such efforts have been rather helpful in refining our conscious models to replicate the same with more precision and accuracy all through our history.

Being strongly rooted in such scientific zeal, the soul of any engineered solution has been its schema for sustaining physical contiguity and functional continuity across its overall implementation inculcating the same into all its procreations. But, a discrete model that our cognitive mechanism can build is always susceptible to inherit gaps and overlaps in its efforts of abstracting the physical reality that continuously seeps into its implementation. It is in its self-alignment with its existential base that the consciousness has been achieving its success all through its evolution. As a result, engineering is continuously engrossed in tweaking its models as well as its strategies to implement the same with a constant effort and success in minimizing all such perceived gaps and overlaps in order to align all its creations to align with the natural laws of existence.

The scientific resolve to catch and fix all such gaps in building innovative models and engineering the same into physical realities has lead to the growth of a corollary branch in our conscious evolution. Correlation between the internal and external simulations remains the key for success to commission the extension of internal mechanisms to develop and prove the ideas in their extended physical grounds. Accordingly, the human consciousness has been relentlessly engaged in fine-tuning its modes of perception, synthesis and projection minimizing its own gaps in its operations through continuous learning enabling constant correlation and correction in all its acts and ideas.

Conscious aspiration to know has obviously peaked with human ambition to reach out beyond their physical as well as psychosomatic limits. We have exploited the trick of simulation and have been excelling in the trade to appreciate sub-atomic behavior to galactic behavior of existence. Thanks to our extended simulation abilities, we can assimilate any extreme situation of nature be it wrapped in fire or by ice within our grasp. In a way, whatever limits our simulative ability seems to be the only hurdle for the expanse of our knowledge as well. In other words, the knowledge we can ever grasp is synonymous to the simulative capability and capacity we can ever possess. Naturally our focus has been on enhancing our simulative capability and capacity persistently.

Our simulative capability as well as capacity has outgrown those of our natural existence long back. We have learnt to network ourselves to synergize unimaginable collective power as a community. The gigantic pyramids of Egypt and the monumental wall of China are testimonies for our collective engineering prowess. Just imagine the simulations that have gone through the minds and bodies of the human force in order to conceive and materialize such gigantic ideas.

We have extended our sensory and muscular power by taming our fellow animals to supplement our own natural limits. We have multiplied our strength with our partners from the animal world to achieve what our limbs and senses could not with their own physiological limitations. Not only that; we have invented machines that mimic our own muscles and senses to boost our sensory and muscular power with an exponentially increasing ratio. Now we have invented computers that mimic our conscious engine – brain, mind and intellect – to supplement and complement our cognitive power as well.

We have enabled ourselves to sense what would have not been dreamt before. We have moved at places we would not have fathomed before. We have thought of ideas that would have remained mere myths and fantasies before. Our strength, skills as well as awareness are multiplied due to our conscious innovation through its relentless experimentation – simulation with objects, actions, ideas as well as experience! Our appreciation of the ways nature works is gaining precision and accuracy at an exponential rate thanks to the way we correlate our simulative appreciation across our thoughts and actions with reference to the objects of our interest in the physical world.

It is not only scientists and technologists who have grown with simulation; but all walks of humans as well as their domestic associates are reaping the fruits of conscious innovation today. Just imagine couple of centuries back. The material comforts that the common people are enjoying today across the globe were not even there amongst the luxuries available to the royalties then. Our appetite for experience has not diminished in our chase for simulative power. In fact, our simulative experience has enhanced our appetite for experience further enriching the same with much more imaginative interpretations and extensions that we could not have fantasized otherwise. Internal gratification thus aspired is outweighing the physiological gratification we are all used to since ages. After all, all that we know or we aspire to know is art of replicating the nature we perceive with closer vivid details. And the effective projector we have is the simulative capability and capacity we are amassing over ages.

Consciousness is perpetually engaged in the pursuit of knowledge. Conscious assertion of its individual in its world results in a four-fold division in its pursuits: The Cause, the trigger for the simulation that feeds inputs to set the simulation with an initial state; The Course that the simulation is designed to trace conforming to the inputs it is released with; The Effect, the results that the simulation can churn out; and The Field that the simulation stretches into. The conscious advantage has been in its freedom to churn multiple courses from a cause leading to multiple results in the same field so that it can enact the most optimal course of action thus perceived in order to reap the most enhanced results from the same. Obviously, continuous learning focuses the most in the cause that it has no control over. More it understands what the causes are, better it can tune its simulations for most reliable solutions. It does not mean that it has none to learn from the rest. The more it understands its own potential courses, the better it can tune them closer to the underlying physical principles. The more it understands the nature of the results from its courses, the more precise it can tweak its simulations to produce dependable results. The more choices and options it can churn out and analyze, vaster it can stretch its field of awareness. Its ultimate goal is always to expand the horizons of its awareness so that it can tap more opportunities to promote the very epicenter it works from.

Even though the life promotes amassing knowledge at its genetic epicenters such an individual being, its mimetic seed sowed deep into every such being networks such individual knowledge generating a collective awareness that swathes the entire earth today. No chunk of knowledge is left in isolation anywhere in this mimetically charged conscious network. The higher potential for survival that such collective synergy offers seems to be just a bite for the beings to chase. It is the chase itself that they are compelled with that hems the chunks of knowledge from the individuals and integrate the same into its collective knowledge base that is fed back into its new generations to come. It is this chase that the life has inculcated into its population that feeds its evolution all through. It is with such chase every organism, plant and animal adapt their life styles to survive with ever-changing environments.

But, it is with the humans the race has gained its pace and momentum by many orders. We have gained such momentum in multiple modes in order to serve the conscious purpose of evolution of knowledge, be it the leap from living with petty hunting to farming; or the evolution of scattered tribes into formidable empires; or gaining livelihood by bartering services and commodities to global economies with wealth that we don’t even see anymore; or the network of schools, libraries and universities that preserve and promote the knowledge! As it provides comfort and gratification to its population from their extraordinary feats helping them conquer not only their natural habitat on ground but also alien dominions such as water, air and even space beyond! In its labyrinths, it seems to permit its individual forms to claim ownership on their inventions, achievements and possessions to keep them motivated in the chase they are allotted with. But, at its abyss, all such individual claims are stripped off so that the chunks of knowledge are blended into its collective recipe. It does help the individuals to fortify their little castles and nurture the same in order to conduct their own little experiments with life. But, no such castles do really matter in its recipe that dissolves all of them alike time and again in order to build newer castles with newer inhabitants to continue its experimentation further.

At the same time, life seems to remain an enigma to its own awareness as its physical substratum seems to elude its conscious appreciation in spite of the exponential accumulation of facts, data and knowledge its consciousness has been extracting from the same. It is the potency of an unknown that seems to vitalize the flow of life. All of us would cease to see a purpose to live if there was nothing more to learn! Every being urges to live only to learn more on its own life and it is the knowledge thus acquired that fuels the very urge to live in the first place!! In other words, “urge to know” is synonymous to “urge to live” and everyone is compelled to continue to learn as long as one nurtures a wish to live!!!

13.               Conscious Blind Sight?

The ambitious agenda of consciousness to know its existence in its subtlest details for promoting its sentient epicenters to newer levels of survival success has inspired human intelligence to characterize the cosmic simulations at its subtler details for its own alignment with the agenda. It just knows that the bigger the power it aligns with, the bigger its own power would grow; and the subtler the knowledge it conquers, the subtler would its own awareness would grow. But, its assumptions also would grow bigger when it attempts to tackle bigger forces in their subtler details. As a result, it widens its gaps in its appreciation of the existential subtleties in its very attempts to align itself with the same. It is by taking risks with such overwhelming gaps, the human intelligence has transcended many such a hurdles in its history.

Overwhelmed by the cosmic complexity of the elemental network of inertial simulations across, the consciousness often tumbles upon its own gross imaginations to simplify its appreciation of the cosmos into some mental models.  Often, the trivialization it subjects upon its models goes without its notice! When it becomes confounded with the complexity, it would not hesitate to develop romantic fantasies even e.g. multi-dimensional notions of existence apart from the one that it can sense through its cognitive apparatus. It would even fantasize some celestial and trans-celestial phenomena that seem to transcend the physics and chemistry of the elemental simulations that it seems to be aware of. Its vested interest in all such exaggerations remains the same – promoting its own dreams of transcending its current existential limitations. The idea that “there should be a celestial dominion that transcends the world a sentient being is enabled to work with” is rationally synergized by a conscious acknowledgement of its own sensory limitations! It draws its immense power of extrapolation to extend theories into the domains it does not understand, and even into some that it can’t even fathom!

But, a conscious intelligence cannot transcend its cognitive barriers it is born with. We cannot understand any information from this world unless it is broken into the bits that our senses can catch and our mind can process. Our mind remains absolutely blind to any reality that remains outside the regimes of the five senses it is enabled to process and experience. Thanks to the extended instrumentation we have invented, we might be able to process extended spectra of these senses in an intellectual sense. Yet our acceptance remains well within our sensible bounds. On the other hand, we can neither design an instrument to sense something that we cannot sense nor can our mind appreciate any input outside its own realms even if an instrument happens to feed some signals that cannot reach its consciousness!

Our consciousness suffers another setback of its own. All the instrumentation it is naturally equipped with as well as the instrumentation that it can fabricate cannot sense and measure its very existence. In an effort to offset, rather evade, its own predicaments on its own existence, the consciousness often trivializes its existential basis – the body and its world – as subservient and inert. Somehow life has been understood (more likely misunderstood!) as localization of conscious identity within a dominion that seem to support the same. In other words, a material cluster that such an identity can assert its territorial stakes over claims a life for itself as long as such an identity could be kept alive.

Since the consciousness is pivotal to sustain integrity of such a stake, the whole life is assimilated by the very consciousness to be revolving around itself! Since the consciousness seems to dominate its simulations, it gets to believe that the dominion it claims is under its spell. The sense of authority that it gains through its simulations consistently empowers it to put itself “above” the existence. It starts claiming itself to be “sentient” capable of perceiving, evaluating, judging and acting with valid knowledge and a patching intelligence. Such empowerment makes it discredit its own existential basis as “insentient” incapable of vision and action lacking knowledge and intelligence. Extending the assumption of life to possess the same qualities of sentience, we often discredit everything devoid of such sentient qualities to be lifeless or inert. 

Strictly speaking, elemental to galactic simulations are realized through consciousness only. Life as we know on this earth has been evolving by gravitating consciousness around its specific samples. Humans, being at the zenith of such evolution of life, are naturally overwhelmed by such individualization so much that the consciousness thus captive within an individual entity refuses the life to be otherwise! Such cocooned consciousness intentionally cripples itself not to appreciate its elemental roots blended into its cosmic expanse lest its sense of individual sovereignty would wither away. Even when its own prized knowledge and intelligence suggest such a fact, it is compelled to reject the idea in order to hold onto its identity gained within the cocoon it believes to occupy. Obviously, a consciousness captive within an individual dominion would look at the entire universe to be centered at its own epicenter and interpret its observations accordingly. Therefore, the evolution of life discussed here rather is in the light of how a very generic existence transforms into individualized conscious beings gaining and claiming specific dominions and definitions of their own.  

It is impossible for an individual conscious simulation, irrespective of its dreams, to supersede its gigantic substratum in the elemental flow pervading the entire universe and beyond. No matter how smart we can make our cars to be, nothing can help if the driver insists to remain blind! Interestingly, “blindness” is relevant to only conscious beings who assume to “drive” their bodies all through their lives! Existence does not seem to be crippled by any blindness as such. Blind spots glare a conscious observer because of the implicit anticipatory nature the observation is triggered with. There is no anticipation in inertial and organic simulations and hence no emotional stakes are waged on the outcome of the simulation.

However, it should not be forgotten that the conscious simulation that is relevant to any individual being has evolved around its anticipatory power only. Every such simulation is developed with a predictive expectation measuring a “return” for all its activities. Return of the investment it makes in its efforts to survive remains the driving factor for its very existence. Therefore, any outcome that defies/denies such predictions would be considered not acceptable. But, the existential flow it works with has its own dynamism and always violates such expectations since such anticipatory knowledge extracted from the very existential flow would have turned obsolete by now already. Therefore, a conscious observer is always compelled to “correct” or “tune” one’s simulative parameters to achieve predicted performance in the simulation perpetually.

All conscious blind spots arise only because the very observer happens to wrap the conscious sight with such emotional insistence on its continuously changing environment to conform to its obsolete notions of the same held within its memory.  Therefore, perpetual deviation from reality is natural to an emotionally blinded conscious being and hence it cannot help but to face one or the other blind spot constantly. In fact, all its notions of correctness, correlation and learning are pivoted on this fallacy it is forced to live with – it ought to crystallize itself around an emotional claim to retain its identity which would diverge it from the constantly changing reality around; and it ought to set itself back in track with the environmental realities in order to steer its dominion in the same efficiently as well as effectively.

Also, a conscious simulation can never outgrow another fundamental dichotomy it imbibes. It is a product of a vital simulation by itself. Yet, it is the only authority to authorize the authenticity of the same! No matter however we try, the only evidence to our conscious knowledge is its own hoard of imagery excavated from its memory and borrowed through its senses. Its knowledge cannot be exposed to any physical experimentation other than what it can volunteer through its own communication channels. It always looks for an independent evidence to prove all its theories on existence. Most of its correlation and correction techniques depend on cross-examination and alternative experimentation looking for as many indicators to converge to its precedent knowledge. It ridicules certain apparently illogical expressions that happen to come across as superstition when they fail to relate to its memorial imagery in any fashion.

But, its own existence, experience as well as knowledge cannot be authenticated by a second party. Others, at their best, can only reflect its own expressions regarding its existence, experience and knowledge. It ought to implicitly depend upon its own superstitious insistence on its authenticity established well within its own simulative limits since it cannot extract any rationale to subsist the notion! Our own innate existence thus remains absolutely opaque to any direct scrutiny from an external agency and hence our consciousness remains absolutely blind to the absolute reality of its own existence from its own standards of testimony and verification. There is no way other than accepting that “I am”. Nothing else can ever verify, prove and establish it in any other fashion! Accordingly many ancient philosophers of the east discard the world claimed by sentience as well as the sentience itself as mere illusion suggesting their own consciousness not to consider itself seriously!

On the other hand, the science circumvents the very question on the sentient individualism as it cannot establish it within its framework of physically sensible facts and evidence. However, it has been growing with the concept of time that defines the sense of sentience and has based most of its models with dual dominions of space and time set in mutual correlation. Such dual dominion is a necessity to reflect the dual nature of sentient existence that complements its current observation of the physical world around with its knowledge and intelligence borrowed from its own imaginary world within in order to make sense out of its transactions with the physical world it attempts to calibrate. All its calibration are based on the rationale it has accumulated from its experiments with its world and its observations over the behavior such a world over generations. But the very basis of all such calibration – its own reality and authority – remains untested as it has no apparatus to test itself on one hand and it refuses to reflect upon its own deepest fallacy fearing potential decimation of its own identity with such inquiry on the other hand.

However, as if to acknowledge such conscious fallacy, there are some trends of downplaying the time gaining momentum in the scientific community over the recent past. As Einstein exclaimed once, “The distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, though a convincing one”. Stephen Hawking makes a remarkable observation on time, "I still believe the universe has a beginning in real time, at the big bang. But there's another kind of time, imaginary time orthogonal to this real time, in which the universe has no beginning or end". In the “imaginary” dominion (absolute reference for universal presence), the boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary. That means, it would neither be created nor destroyed. In other words, the universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would therefore just BE. In such case, time is in perfect unison with space and hence remains absolutely redundant. He admits further to this effect, “This might suggest that the so called imaginary time is really the real time and that what we call real time is just a figment of our imagination”! Such thinking has been gaining momentum amongst many other great physicists such as Brian Greene and David Bohm who tend to collude with variant depictions of concurrent existence of everything in the universe.

However the schools of knowledge attempt to propagate the memes on sentient and existential subtleties amongst the humans, everything that any human can ever perceive remains a Schrodinger’s cat with a heavy tag of uncertainty with the knowledge as well as the belief that a human mind can ever concoct. Few consistent queries are enough to hit the opaque bottom of our confidence in our knowledge and to expose the vulnerability of our intelligence. Can the consciousness ever come out of its shackles of uncertainty in its existential appreciation and take a stand of absolute certainty on its own? Probably not! At least, it does not sound plausible until the consciousness cannot exist on its own independent of its existential basis!! In a way, to any individual being, the only simulator as well as the simulation seems to be this mind! The mind has to just recall itself when it retires from its act of simulation, say, in deep sleep wherein everything just stands still with no impressions and with no expressions of any kind anywhere. Is all that this mind seems to concoct nothing but its own illusions as the Vedic essence of the Ancient East alludes into?! If so, so should be the mind as such! So should be whatever it imagines as well!! In that case, is everything is just suspended in a void of nothingness as nothing but a void as Buddha puts it? 

There have been excruciating debates and insistent schools at wars to herald supremacy of sentience and existence over each other. The “existentialists” would underplay the sentience as a mere derivative of existence generated to experience and elate on the magnificent diversity nature and its elemental supremacy. On the other hand, the “sentientologists” would refute that the very idea is also originated from the very sentience that is being denounced and that even those elements cannot flow the way they do without an innate sentience driving them the way they are. They would rather insist that the sentience is the supreme driving force that dictates the existence to manifest and drive it to behave the way it does; and that the world manifests from its abyss, dwells within its purview and dissolves into its very abyss in order to earn its re-manifestation well within its purview every moment.

But, it remains an utter reality that no sentient being has seen its so called sentience outside its own existential realms; and at the same time, no existence is ever envisioned without a sentient witness! Also, it is the virtual assimilation that can ever reveal what the world could be to us; and no such virtual device could sense anything but the physical reality however fractional its purview could be. It is such inseparable symbiosis of existence and sentience that has been pervading this universe setting it in its eternal dynamism. The symbiosis is like a team of a lame riding a blind. The sentience is lame incapable of navigating, even of existing, in physical realms on its own. The existence is blind incapable of envisioning its own perpetually variant stretch and of experiencing its own dynamics on its own. But, in their union, they remain as dynamic as they are pervading the entire universe.

There is another blindfold an individual sentience is forced to navigate itself with. A sentient being is probably blinded much more by its perceived threat for its very sense at the eventual dissemination of the body that synergizes such a sense than by anything else. Life releases senses of pain and pleasure to sustain a split in the person by ingraining crave for retaining an individual sense with fear of its eventual dissolution with the body it assumes for itself. The being sprints along the flow of life constantly trying to escape from its fear so that it can catch up with its crave, achieving neither! It keeps up its sprint with a spirit of minimizing pain and maximizing pleasures, again, achieving neither!! Actually, the very sense of liveliness one can relish is derived from constant recycling of pains and pleasures. Overwhelmed by an impulsion to be alive forever, it somehow starts believing it can achieve its ends by annihilating pain as it lures itself by the pleasure to be the eternal mode of living. However hard it strives, it cannot eradicate the pain from its horizons. The frustration snowballs the fear of pains into its fear of self extinction. As a result, the fellow suffers from one’s own uncertainty much more than the physical pain that is released to sustain the flow of life. It is this exaggerated misery that blindfolds a conscious being further.

Few conscious epicenters are enabled to reflect upon such blindness once in a while to realize how the individual sentience is sustained within the flow of a super-conscious sentience pervading the entire universe just like the body is sustained well within a universal flow of matter and energy. The same reflection would also reveal another secret that the sense of pleasure is when the being is aligned with this universal flow and the pain is when the fellow attempts to inculcate a perturbation in such alignment. Accordingly, surrender of sentient individualism is treated as the most promising path for attaining eternal joy and hence has been the focal theme for almost all theologies and religions around the globe.

The science is not behind either in its pursuit of the absolute reality, but with an opposed agenda – to strengthen individual synergy further from such understanding. It has theorized the universal existence variantly often bordering thinly with its theological nemesis. It has attempted to dive deep into the particulate details as well as to fly through the cosmic continuum in order to integrate its variant appreciations. But, none of such revelations and understandings seems to eradicate the conscious blindness we are borne with. The design of life seems to hold majority of its population in compulsion to reject such ideas at core! It is this blindness that seems to be the key for the life to keep its ball rolling through its diverse population on this planet!!

14.               Some Musings

Simulative evolution has surely ensured an exponential technological growth in empowering our inorganic extensions in terms of instruments and machinery assisting us in not only industrial and technological realms but also in our day-to-day activities. The conscious evolution of life is hitting newer heights every other year in the recent past. The emergence of digital gadgets and networks has changed the entire lifestyle around the globe. The digital computers that used to fill huge air-conditioned rooms have grown to fit into our palms connecting us to anything and everything across the globe; and are racing to fit themselves well within our cellular stretch! We can reach any corner of the globe in matter of hours and days and we can reach out to anyone anywhere on this globe almost instantly. Both were not even fathomed in quite recent past of our existence. The transportation and information network that wraps this planet today exceeds the very organic stretch that has initiated the same through the humans. Any information is made available at our finger tips thanks to the digital revolution. Anyone can reach anything in matter of hours and days. But ...

Technology has made us believe we have understood a lot on this universe. But, we cease to wonder on the twinkling stars in the dark nights anymore. Even such dark nights have become rare, thanks to the artificial lighting webs we have wrapped this earth with. Also, in real, we have remained as ignorant right beneath the very sheath of such informative confidence. Rather, we might say, we have grown more ignorant toward the very wonder of existence at our very core being. Multi-tasking has become a norm of living today. I used to see my son during his school days playing TV, browsing internet on his laptop, listening to music and texting to someone on his smart phone, and munching some snacks while completing his school assignments. People chattering into thin air through their Bluetooth devices while walking amidst a crowd in the streets of a busy metropolitan; couples constantly browsing and texting during an allegedly romantic dinner at a cozy restaurant; people constantly chatting through online media but refusing to have any talk face-to-face; all these makes me wonder what we are truly achieving in such restless activities. Technology is creating a newer gap of mutual indifference amongst us while it is helping us shrink the geographical gap between ourselves.

Technology has mobilized us like never before. It has enabled our life to become truly global. It has helped us build massive concrete jungles for our dwelling. It has enabled us to build an exhaustive network of roads not only on the ground but also across the oceans and even sky. We have flooded all such routes with automobiles, ships and planes. We have flooded our households with gadgets of comfort and communication. And, yet I see societies much more dislocated than ever today when compared to the well-knit and self-sufficient villages that I had witnessed in my childhood. Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of self sufficiency is completely lost today. Pangs of insufficiency seem to constantly nag us even though we seem to have achieved amassing wealth and comfort around ourselves. Contentment has become the rarest amenity amongst us today. If not for contentment, I often wonder, why such breathless rat race?

Thanks to the growing simulative appreciation of human anatomy and health, we have achieved a phenomenal success in protecting and extending our lives. Extending life span has been the highest agenda in the entire human search for knowledge. We have amassed knowledge in medicines to protect ourselves from life threats so much that our reproduction has out-beaten its odds resulting in an uncontrollable population growth. Our population explosion over the past few decades probably exceeds the same over past couple of millenniums. We have triumphed over macro- as well as micro-organic predators pretty successfully. But, it sounds like that handful of deer left in an island devoid of predators. To start with, they flourish in an exponential form with unlimited reproductive potential with no threat from predators. But, the story is not so rosy forever; soon they exhaust the resources to dwindle their population on their own. So we ought to be heading toward such destiny as well. We have outpaced our natural adversities by far. True. But, have we not become our own adversaries, even turned ourselves into our own predators time and again?

I hear brilliant people contemplating on human progress as letting the machines mimic human acts and thoughts; and even advise us on what we should do. I even hear few brilliant brains chart out visions of embedding nano chips in our neural networks to enhance our intelligence to learn much more and at much faster pace. A superman browsing a fat book to absorb the knowledge it beholds in few seconds has been our supreme fantasy! But, why should we know so much? Are we really dependent on most of knowledge we have amassed today on a day-to-day basis? How much that we seem to know has real utility for our living in real? On the contrary, we might be growing more ignorant in our very effort of amassing information. Are we not shy of learning today as we can always browse our ignorance away through many informative media? Information is at our finger tips. True. But, are we not letting the depth and quality of knowledge slipping away at the same time? I find people talking on many things, but on nothing in particular. Amassing information seems to be competing with our age old habit of amassing wealth with no true utility for most of what we amass in our entire life spans!

Whenever I catch myself in the race I see a donkey in myself trying hard to reach a delicious carrot dangling at the tip of a long stiff rod tied firmly to my head. Our end goal of contentment might always be visible in our beliefs, but often never reachable in real! I often feel like a hamster sprinting within a wheel frantically chasing a sweet meat held in the front while running away from a fire held behind. Our chase is gaining momentum and even newer dimensions in a much faster pace today than ever thanks to the technological revolution in the recent couple of decades. We are afraid for no reason while we crave for very distant, often non-existent, pleasures. Our minds chase many such wheels concurrently as if it is a contest. We have no time for having a healthy conversation with our partners and participate in healthy social activities without being distracted by the gadgets that adorn us. If I enter into any social gathering is everyone with bright palms, more with the younger generations not excluding even toddlers! All appear to be busier scrolling those bright screens in their palms than interacting with those sitting or standing next them!! We have no time for ourselves as our life is scattered into so many diverse and divergent activities. Getting scattered thin into so many activities is quite intoxicating just like alcohol. Both would not let us feel ourselves, let alone feeling our fellow beings next to us, even remotely so that we do not need to worry about ourselves, and more importantly others. Our joy vested in our ignorance of our bliss has been growing thicker than ever.

I am often dazed when the technocrats day-dream on moderating human behavior toward an absolutely congenial society devoid of any bias and hence live in absolute peace forever. Well, does humanity have anything to identify itself with if diversity is removed from its population? Can human societies sustain their diversities if pride and prejudice are removed from their members? Are the humans really humans if they cannot distinguish themselves with distinctions? What is life if we turn ourselves to be mere robots? We all might want others to behave like robots – serving us to our best interests with no strings attached. But, our vision takes a 180 degree turn when we are suggested to become one such robot for ourselves!

The same arguments are often extended to automation of many of our activities – the robots performing with consistent precision and efficiency devoid of emotional baggage that their human counterparts come with. So far so good; the conscious intelligence that has been transferred into our inorganic extensions has not let our emotional quotient leak into them. They seem to be loyal and obedient to our wishes thus far. Will the sentience being transferred into inorganic media behave differently from its organic base? Will the inorganic consciousness focus on its pure expansion without motivating its own epicenters just like it has been doing to its human lieutenants deployed to enable such an evolution? If the inorganic bodies show similar traits as their organic enablers, can their organic predecessors stand a chance while their prodigies invade the world? Since the inorganic bodies develop direct energy processing from inorganic resources, they need not depend on organic food and hence the organic beings. Will they then let the organisms including the humans to survive? Will the terminator ever come back to human’s beck and call to correct the human greed over time?!

We need not fetch our imagination far to appreciate the repercussions. We seem to claim that all we do is for our collective good. The threat of automation has already dawned in many minds. No one who campaigns for automation would ever embrace the same when it turns its axe to one’s own base! As we have evolved, one of the basic necessities of living is to have a job that promises to fetch a living for ourselves. We need to work to live. But, we constantly invest ourselves to retire others from work in order to gain a personal edge. The brilliant minds that are in concert to eliminate human labor at large today do suggest on a “technology tax” that pays off people who has no work. We seem to forget here that idling mind is a devil’s workshop as it embraces restlessness at its very hint. Unrest is the only outcome of a restless population forced to idle. Also, we should not forget here the law of the organic nature we are born with; a body in action triumphs and a body in inaction perishes.

Again, the conscious evolution has empowered the humans to overpower all their predators and has enabled to become the super-predators on this earth. But, has it not made them their own predators engaged in constant conflicts seeking each others’ blood and lives, let alone their arrogance of killing their fellow beings just because they can?! It makes me wonder whether this conscious intelligence has an ulterior motif beyond humans. It acts within each being as if the body it possesses is the one and the only important thing to protect and promote in the entire universe. At the same time, it pits the same beings in grave battles slaughtering themselves in greed of hegemony exaggerated within their own conscious beliefs! It is interesting that the human consciousness has evolved achieving exponential expansion of its own role in our daily activities and control over our lives in general through such blood thirsty campaigns that we are compelled to engage ourselves in! The technology has exploded through the very greed that triggers such bloodshed. The terror of its aftermaths, in return, compels us to transfer our knowhow to our much more efficient inorganic counterparts helping ourselves to gather threads of life back from the ashes of such campaigns like a Phoenix bird rising from its ashes. Somehow, to our own dismay, all such great evolutions have been serving such campaigns at core at an exponentially growing scale all through our history even though they were all intended to promote prosperity amidst us.

The question stands there gawking at me as ever. Are we mere puppets of life enabling its own ambitious evolution? Will it just discard us when we fail to cope with its evolutionary agenda as it has been doing for ages when it happens to find better agencies to carry its evolution forward? OR ... are we mere victims to our own greed that blindfolds us not to envision life at large? Is it this greed that the life has implanted into us so that it can puppeteer our lives for its own end? Are the brilliant human minds puppets of their own conscious ambition, or pawns played by human greed at large or commanders appointed by life to execute its commandments toward its own enigmatic progression? What is important to us? Being the humans that we have been all these millenniums? Or transcending human barriers that might prove catastrophic to the entire race, nay, to the entire form of life as we know on this planet? Where are we headed to with our exponentially inflating greed for wealth, knowledge and comfort, let alone our population? OR ... more mystical question of much deeper relevance here would be ... where the life is headed to on this little planet that matters to our lives now and for our offspring in the times to come?

Is it time to contemplate on Steve Hawking’s recent advice for humans to plan fleeing the planet within a century? The great mind also admits that there is no such alter-utopia congenial to the organic life form established here. Even if there is one somewhere deep in the space, the migration should quicken its pace to outpace the speed of light by many factors! Even if we happen to achieve such speed, the matter that constitutes our very existence as well as our mode of transportation should retain its integrity at such speeds. The window looks very bleak! Therefore, I contemplate aloud, is it not time to contemplate on corrections to human behaviors and ambitions in order to minimize the damage inflicted upon this planet and even revert life back into its organic excellence in line with its natural ways of progression?

At the same time, I ought to concede that the mass progression of human societies has gathered an irresistible momentum today. All our evolutions have been irreversible since the time we tread can never be retraced ever. Therefore, are such contemplations mute as the life marches ahead in its own way no matter how an individual happens to think about it; and follow the fate of the fellow species that have sought appearance only to proceed toward their extinction many a times due to overpopulation and sheer lack of resources they demand on the surface of this planet?!

Acknowledgement:

The author is deeply indebted to everyone he has been privileged to grow with and everything that he has been honored to experience both being the sole source for everything he can ever assimilate over his limited life-span here. He is truly grateful to everyone and everything for guiding him through his world here and for inspiring him from his own depths from within. He is most grateful to the very simulation that assimilates him as well as the world he is graced to assimilate.

Reference:

This article has been presented in a meditative style that is familiar to the Ancient East in contrast with the referential style that prevails today across the globe. From a meditative perspective, no specific body of knowledge can exist in isolation and hence cannot be completely based on few specific references for its existence. From this perspective, the sole reference to any specific knowledge is the all-pervasive knowledge and the sole authority to express a snapshot of the same is the experience it happens to stir within its seer. Therefore, in a meditative style of rendering knowledge, neither making any specific reference as its origin is considered prudent nor building it without innate experiential appreciation is considered vital. A droplet of the universal flow of knowledge has been savored here in its own way. This droplet cannot exist without infinitude of its own kind that floods the enigmatic knowledge seeping through its tiny cavity here.

The readers are welcome to add relevant references from their own lives as the hints presented in the article percolate into their own experiences as well as from the treasure of literature they are exposed to over their lives. The author is deeply indebted to receive feedback – both referential as well as experiential – from the readers enriching his appreciation of the subject further.