On the "Interbeing" of the Universe

I was reading the Heart Sutra with commentary by Thich Nhat Hanh earlier this morning. A theme throughout the sutra and commentary is the understanding of “emptiness” and “interbeing,” that all things are empty of a distinct self-nature and are no other than the composite aggregates of all other things. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form is understood, in one sense, in that the supposed duality of the perceiver and the perceived, in fact, constitute the non-dual whole of “perception.” For example, the eye and the sight constitute the process or experience of “seeing.” In truth, there is no distinction between the seer and the seen, merely an awareness of seeing.

This is why quantum mechanics and Einstein’s physics of Relativity are perfectly compatible with Buddhist metaphysics. In quantum mechanics, it is understood that the perceiver (“observer”) and the thing observed constitute an “entangled,” codependent, co-arising reality. With Einstein’s Relativity, it is understood that space-time is one interwoven fabric in which each observer perceives a different shape to space and rate of the passage of time that is dependent upon their relative position and motion within that fabric. The fabric of space-time is literally interwoven out of the infinite many threads of quantum entanglement that constitute the awareness, “silent witness,” “buddha-nature” that pervades the entire Universe.

Thus, it becomes clear that the entire Universe, space-time itself by definition, IS fundamentally a “dream fabric” of “empty” awareness ("shunyata"). In truly understanding “interbeing” we can not only recognize the compatibility of modern physics with Buddhist metaphysics, but more universally, we can understand nirvana lies in the direct realization that the essence of our true self is “no-self” – we all are One interwoven fabric of Cosmic Consciousness.

On the Nature of Conscious-Awareness

Consciousness is aware of itself by degrees of coherent self-integration, or lack thereof, within local/relative frames of reference ("personal" perspectives). "Awareness" is the non-dualistic concept describing the fundamental "fabric" of spatiotemporal causality relations (i.e. quantum entanglement field, "Universal Spirit", "Source", "Collective Unconscious", etc.), whereas "consciousness" is a dualistic (relativistic) concept describing the degree to which information (energy) is "locally" integrated/entangled (self-perceiving).

Now, tie in the Standing-Wave Theory of Matter, which understands "particles" to be nothing more than the dynamic centers of standing-waves (a simultaneous inward and outward propagation of information/energy waves). As inward flowing information converges at a focal point all component quanta become quantumly entangled with one another (all information quanta are integrated/synchronized/mutually-aware at that relative position in space-time) and pass on through as an outward propagating flow of information. A self-aware being "exists" (from its own point of view) only at the infinitesimally small convergence point of information flow in space-time.

From the perspective of a self-aware "mind" with the conceptual notion of past & future, the "past" is the outward information that has already passed through the focal center of its awareness (the infinitesimal slice of space-time called "now") and the "future" is the inward propagating flow of information that hasn't yet converged at this "center of gravity" of awareness. We hazily remember bits and pieces of the "past" because elements of our present-moment brain are still quantumly entangled with elements of our past-moment brain that had encoded the environmental information processed at the time of perception.  Memory is holographic, because the brain makes deliberate use of quantum entanglement to store and recall past brain-states.  The future cannot be perceived because entanglement with that future information-state "has yet to occur".

One significant issue inherent to the nature of biological quantum memory is that the quantum entanglements forming the memory are with past brain states and not with the actual past environmental objects that were experienced, the memory encoded is of a brain-state of perceptions already skewed in their construction by physical, emotional, and cognitive biases.  Such memory is constructive in that the brain naturally attempts to fill in the missing gaps.  (Hence why witness testimony is 'notoriously unreliable'.)  A second significant issue inherent to biological quantum memory is that it is subject to quantum decoherence simply due to the fluctuating operating environment of the brain's "wetwear".  Whether due to a brain injury, a brain disease, or the simple entropy induced by the passage of time, our biological memories are subject to fading away, becoming "fuzzier," and being 'reconstructed' (modified) as gaps in the memories form.

This overall conceptual framework ties into the concept of an infinite multi-verse in the sense that there are an infinite number of points/positions in space-time in which information converges from an infinite number of directions, and therefore an infinite number of foci of self-awareness exist experiencing a uniquely different version of the "universe". Each foci of awareness can only perceive a particular universe that is self-consistent with itself. Coherent/fully-integrated awareness can only exist at the infinitesimal cross-section of space-time that a particular awareness understands as "here & now". In other words, there are infinite number of 'transpersonal layers' (space-time layers) of consciousness that are self-aware. (All of this agrees remarkably well with Buddhist metaphysics as well.)

The True Nature of Dark Energy (and Our Universe)

To understand what dark-energy is you must first visualize the inhabited universe we look "out" upon as literally being the "inner" content of a blackhole that exists within a (geometrically) extra-dimensional "multiverse" manifold. In other words, our "child" universe is a blackhole hyper-sphere ("time" being one of the spatial dimensions) "birthed" from the collapse of a high-density star-like object within an extra-dimensional "parent" universe.

A geometric asymptote known as an "event horizon" merely represents a lensed inversion of space-time, such that what is considered to an observer external to the black-hole to be an inward-outward spatial dimension measuring the black-hole's radii is perceived as a "time" dimension to an internal observer existing within the black-hole. The "Big Bang" is our blackhole universe's geometric singularity (when-where the hyper-star's core first started the formation of the blackhole), whereas the "Heat Death" or "Big Rip" at the end of "time" is the geometric asymptote we call the event horizon (merely approached from within).

Just as gravity is merely the curvature of space-time bending "inward," "dark energy" (anti-gravity) is space-time exhibiting an exponential exfolding (curving "outwardly"). Remove a couple spatial dimensions and imagine our universe as a funnel, with its "tip" the singularity and the "lip"/"rim" the event horizon. Now visualize numerous "world lines" (representing the space-time paths of objects) running from the tip ("Big Bang") to the exponentially widening rim (event-horizon), and, for simplicity, imagine the objects never accelerate relativistically but rather travel unaltered, "straight" paths. Those world-lines will exponentially curve away from each other geometrically as they approach the event horizon ("rim") asymptote.

Now imagine each of these world lines represents a galaxy and the progression of "time" is represented as moving spatially away from the "tip" / singularity / Big Bang of the funnel towards the "rim" / event horizon / Heat Death end. The infinite exponential stretching of space-time, as world-lines approach the event-horizon asymptote, is perceived (from the temporal perspective of the relative objects) as exponentially accelerating expansion, which ultimately takes an infinite amount of "time" to reach for an interior observer. This is exactly the same relativistic effect that is described alternatively as the quantum mechanical "smearing" of information across the event horizons of blackholes (see: holographic principle).

Now, try to extrapolate the funnel geometry to a circle, with tip as center-point and rim as circumference, while maintaining a sense of the stretching/smearing effect as a dilation of space-time.

A simplified, top-down view depiction of the topology of the interior of a blackhole (without angular momentum).
Here the "Big Bang" is at the center, and the "Heat-Death"/"Big Rip" is the "event horizon" circumference.

With this simplified visualization we can see what can be approximated mathematically as a Lie Group (if allowing an infinite radius in the model to account for the logarithmic warping effect of space-time curvature). Now, recall that all black-holes have some degree of geometric spin. Imagine what happens to matter-energy falling into the blackhole due to relativistic "frame-dragging"; it falls inward following an infinite, logarithmic spiral world-line (indeed our "golden spiral" geometry is a consequence of our blackhole universe's angular momentum). Now try to grasp this geometric topology with the removed spatial dimension added back in: you have a hyper-sphere with a toroidal-vortex geometry. This internal space-time curvature is roughly analogous to the patterns exhibited by the electromagnetic fields of the Earth and Sun, and the strong-weak nuclear fields of particles, but is effectively a gravitomagnetic "de Laval nozzle" due to the toroidal-vortex geometry inducing a "Venturi effect." This geometric energy dynamo is responsible for generating the bipolar "relativistic jets" spewing from some blackholes in our universe which physicists still haven't formally understood the mechanism behind.

Regardless, "dark energy" is not an energy at all, but our perception of the exponentially increasing global curvature of space-time as we approach the geometric asymptote that is the event horizon. Try to recognize that our perception of time is merely a perceptual manifestation of consciousness (which is the interference pattern generated by the Fourier Synthesis (quantum entanglement) of de Broglie matter-waveforms, with an effect analogous to "scanning" along these world-lines), and that world-lines are "attracted" to each other by "gravity" over "time" only in the sense that space-time is expanding/stretching less rapidly at shorter distances than at larger distances (a global form of the "Casimir effect").