This is a document I wrote between 2015 and 2017.  It's a small bit
out of date with my latest greatest philosophy.  I wrote it to try and
build a framework to explain the anxieties and idiosyncracies of my
mind.  It didn't work but it was fun.

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* Reality and consciousness
** The intersection of reality and consciousness

The basic concepts of consciousness are logic and morality; the
conception of consciousness presupposes these.  Logic in its simplest
form is causality.  Causality is the basis for all action, and thought
is an action.  An action must have a purpose, which presupposes an
expectation of an outcome (causality) and a motive (morality).
Therefore, a lone mind's thoughts (causality) occur for moral reasons;
consciousness owes it to itself to fulfill its desires, and in this
form morality exists in even a lone consciousness.

** The divergence of reality and consciousness

Common amongst the consciousnesses encountered in reality are these
desires which seem to be fundamental: consciousness wants a place to
be (a space/time union), and consciousness wants other consciousnesses
with which to share that place.

Consciousness can fulfill these desires.  Our reality gifts us with
the fulfillment of these desires at our birth, and reality is not
something that we imagine, but something which happens to us.

With this gift, the concept of "real" diverges from "imaginary".

How can another consciousness communicate with me, yet be separate?
Am I real, or is the place in which I exist real?  How can I
experience a place and interact with it, yet be separate from it?
Where does self end and the other begin?  When consciousness finds
that these questions cannot be completely answered, consciousness has
no choice but to allow that other consciousnesses and places are, at
least to some small degree, aspects of itself, and in so doing, allow
that itself is at least part of everything else.

This forms logical dilemmas -- a paradox, and when this logic is
applied to questions of morality, consciousness finds that morality
must stand on its own.  Logic is a convenient moral guide but is only
a means to an end.  Therefore it is moral to be logical but being
moral is not pure logic.  Logic is a subset of morality.

These troubles, rooted in the concept of existence, are an effect of
belief in reality.  A consciousness gives up something of itself to
believe in a separate reality, an exchange is made.  To say that this
is voluntary or involuntary is impossible; it is voluntary in so much
that you are allowed to decide whether or not you exist.

It takes effort for a consciousness to exist with another
consciousness because it must then empathize with it.  It takes effort
for a consciousness to be someplace, because it must maintain an
internal model of that external place, and then keep the concept of
internal and external separate.

Consciousness as it adjusts to its environment changes its concept of
what is real and what is imaginary.  This shifting takes the form of
interpretation, where consciousness attempts to decide what exactly
reality is as it learns, and action, where consciousness uses the body
to cause change in physical reality.

** Consciousness Worth

It is important to consciousness to know, or to decide, or to learn,
if the real is "worth it";  i.e. "To be or not to be."

Either consciousness is a worthwhile exercise, with positivity and
enjoyment outweighing the negative aspects, or consciousness is just
dead even worth it, or consciousness could just be fooling itself in
to thinking it is worth it; an endless parade of tragedy. 

People who exhibit a belief that there are aspects to existence which
should never be examined are often people who believe that an endless
parade of tragedy is the truth of existence.  It is important however
to differentiate objective examination from convincing oneself of
unsubstantiated realities.  Delusion is absolutely dangerous to
consciousness.  It is necessary to consider, when someone speaks of
something that should never be examined, if they mean it is because
the examination's basis is faulty -- a danger of delusion, or because
they believe reality is a trap (itself a delusion).  They are either
warning you away from delusion, or promoting their own.

Evaluating the worth of existence is, by definition, the most
subjective judgement that is possible to make.  

** Consciousness Relationships

Common science-based reality belief depicts a peer-based model of
consciousness, where consciousnesses are on even terms with one
another; we're all in the same boat.  This model works fine whether or
not reality is "worth it" (in the widest sense).

Another kind of relationship between consciousnesses could exist,
besides a purely peer-based model: nested consciousness.  A
consciousness could forseeably contain, and fully track, but also
internalize and fully control, another consciousness.  Because the
"worth" of the act of creating and maintaining the contained
consciousness would seem to be equal to the "worth" of the
internalized consciousness itself, it's hard to imagine that this
relationship would last long if reality could never be "worth it".  It
would also seem that the depth of nesting is not really limited by any
constraint save the logistics of the reality in which the container
consciousnesses exists.

The difference between nested consciousness and the peer model can
become muddied when you consider that a consciousnesses belief in
other consciousnesses could be said to be nested consciousness as
well, but where each consciousness is nested within another.  If you
draw two circles side by side, they could be said to contain each
other, the reality of their containment is a matter of perspective; if
you were inside one looking out, the other would appear to be within
it.  You could extend this to any number of circles and still make the
claim they are mutually nested, or that one particular one nests all
the others.

So, it should be remembered that, in the case of nested consciousness,
that the containing consciousness is not the circle, but the page the
circles are written upon.  It is necessarily transcendent and so
present and expressed in all aspects of the inner reality.  It would
most purely be expressed to you by reality itself, and secondarily
through other consciousnesses within that reality.

** Society

The human body is composed of many small, semi-autonomous machines
that follow rules and create systems which are unknown to the
conscious mind.  Human consciousness, multiplied by the billions, in a
causally interconnected society, forms a larger organism of a sort.

As far as science has been able to prove, this larger organism seems
to function entirely to serve the desires of human consciousness, and
no proof has been found of true emergent meta-consciousness which
makes demands of its own.

This may however be akin the cells of our body considering the brain
to have no more purpose than to acquire resources for the cells to
consume.  How could we explain our lofty goals to those cells?  How
can we explain them to ourselves?

Humans are extremely social animals; it would seem to be a foregone
conclusion that we are the most social animals known.  We are also the
most intelligent animals known.  There is a definite connection
between the two facts.  Our intelligence is tied to our social
structure, so much so that our entire childhood is dedicated to
refining intelligence through socially-mandated education,
where the intelligence of the former generations is passed on to the
new generation.  We've discovered through trial and error that this
centralization of intelligence provides common ground in which our
consciousnesses may more effectively interact, breeding more
intelligence.

It's not hard to imagine that the ongoing process of transmission,
application and refinement of ideas is itself the manifestation of a
meta-consciousness which performs functions of its own, for the
benefit of individual human consciousnesses, and also for its own
ends.  Society may be the projection in to our reality of other
consciousnesses.

To borrow from information theory, there is ample storage space and
processing power in all these consciousnesses to form the basis for a
larger meta-consciousness or consciousnesses.  It would be foolish to
assume that there are no emergent behaviors whatsoever, the only
question is to what degree do they exist, how rich and complex do the
emergent behaviors become?  From internet memes, to institutionalized
learning, to ancient social traditions, self-replicating ideas are
fundamental building blocks of society and this means these ideas are
subject to the concept of natural selection.

Once you allow for the possibility of emergent consciousness in social
behaviors, is it meaningful to consider them the result of our
existence, or vice-versa?  Nobody would find it meaningful to argue
whether the kidney serves humans, or humans serve kidneys.  We aren't
even conscious of the workings of our kidneys.  Their behavior seems
autonomous.  If someone was never told that they had a thing called a
kidney inside them, they would never know they existed.  It may be
that we too are, in the perspective of these upper consciousnesses,
living out simple existences that seem unfathomable.

However in the case of emergent social thought, which to some extent
forms human consciousness, and simultaneously benefits from human
consciousness, the meta-consciousness does not require physical
nutrition from the body, like a kidney, instead it requires the proper
type of thoughts to sustain it.  It would require that consciousness
perform the correct processing of the correct data to create its
reality.  It would require that human consciousnesses interact with
one another, to facilitate the sharing of information to spread units
of thoughts, seed ideas, which distribute new frontiers of thought
amongst the consciousnesses.

With these loose definitions, there are a nearly infinite number of
these emergent social thoughts which self-replicate.  From our shared
dreams to our shared fears, any emotion upon which these thoughts can
ride forms fertile ground for their existence.

It's also important to consider the subtlety by which these thoughts
are transmitted through society.  When someone tells you something, it
is often the case that the most information you gain is not from what
they say but how they say it, or their body language, facial
expressions, etc.  Typically during conversation one is imbued with
many gut feelings and loose interpretations of what is said.  These
background thoughts are every bit as easily transmitted from person to
person as the actual information being said aloud.  When, in a
conversation, you notice someone avoiding a particular topic, the
common assumption is that that topic is being avoided because it is
very important, otherwise it wouldn't be worth all that effort to
avoid it.  Social interaction is inevitably rife with side channels
through which this information leaks.  By avoiding something you draw
attention to it.  Body language, speech patterns, etc. betray your
thoughts.

Indeed topics that are avoided during polite conversation; sex,
politics, etc. are avoided precisely BECAUSE they are so important.
They are so important that they cannot be brought up in conversation
because people simply cannot handle the burden of holding up a civil
conversation when these hardcore survival concepts are present.  It is
understood that conversations that cover these topics end up carrying
too much at stake, become life-or-death struggles, and so the topics
are simply avoided.

But this does not relieve the pressure of these topics.  The social
convention of avoiding these in 'polite conversation' simply moves the
pressure to other outlets that we've found to be more efficient and
predictable.  This is all managing scarcity.  Politics is the
distribution of scarce goods, sexuality is scarcity of contact and
reproduction, etc.  Scarcity is responsible for the social gradients
which account for all the conventions of social contact.

Because the topics which most directly apply to scarcity are topics
which are most heavily fraught with protocol and procedure, these
topics are the most intensely looked for and as a result the most
heavily expressed in the unavoidable side channels of information
which in social interaction.

** Scarcity in Society

Scarcity is particularly simple to visualize in the physical world.
There is so much food and it must be distributed amongst so many
people.  It may seem paradoxical, but there is also much scarcity of
non-physical goods.  Beyond food and shelter, most other scarcity ends
up being social scarcity.  A consciousnesses motives are often not
driven by physical goods, but instead by desires for intangible
things; the approval of others, the approval of self, recognition for
good deeds and catharsis and absolution for bad.  These are things of
which there is no physical realization except for the expressions of
other consciousnesses.

This sort of scarcity is difficult to reconcile with logic.  Consider
a scenario where one consciousness insults another.

We all understand what this means, but it's not so easy to say what
form this takes within consciousness.  A bruised ego is a feeling, not
an objective analytical concept.  Social interactions are not so
easily pinned down.  What is happening here?  One consciousness
asserts to another that the other has some flaw.  What does that
consciousness have to gain by telling the other?  Why does the other
consciousness get bothered by it?

This sort of conflict ends up being a battle over the conception of
reality.  These two consciousnesses disagree about what is reality.
One consciousness thinks that the others actions are a detriment to
consciousness at large, the other disagrees.  At stake is the
self-esteem of each consciousness; this becomes a tangible,
transferable thing, once it is rooted in a shared reality
interpretation, it becomes a tug of war with a very real and finely
defined conception.  To the consciousnesses involved it is not
necessarily any more real or unreal than a piece of food.  The
consciousnesses share the same causal space, the prevailing conception
will distribute through the causal space, through other
consciousnesses in the society, and become the shared reality.

If the shared reality does not match a consciousnesses internalized
model, then that consciousness loses its ability to share reality with
other consciousnesses.  Sharing reality with other consciousnesses
will come at a cost of losing the conception of a separate reality, or
changing it.  Changing it is only possible if the consciousness can
justify the change as being correct; you can't make yourself believe
something you don't believe.

So we have consciousnesses tracking a fixed and scarce resource,
self-esteem; an egocentric interpretation of reality.  This resource
is balanced; we compare ourselves to others in order to calibrate our
sense of self-esteem.  Some artificially inflate their self-esteem at
the cost of sacrificing their synchronicity with shared reality.
Others artificially deflate it in an attempt to gain a surplus of
synchronicity with shared reality.  Neither approach truly works, but
they are inevitable outcomes during the analog self-esteem calibration
process.

The overall active balanced network of positivity of consciousness is
the manifestation of the basic morality motive.  Logic is the basic
tool by which the manifestation is modulated.  The combined expression
of morality and logic is the reality which consciousness ends up
believing in.

So consciousnesses basic conflict discussed at the beginning of the
document is expressed; morality and logic applied to a desire for
reality and consciousnesses' coexistence.  The separations present a
logical dilemma, that leads to moral dilemmas.  Reality lacking the
conflict is scarce.  So positivity is the reality which is lacking the
conflict, negativity is the conflict.  In our experience of reality,
the conflict is expressed as scarcity, social strife results.  All
social strife takes the form of differing interpretations of reality.

So this means that conflicts about non-tangible concepts can be traced
to this same essential conflict.  But, what about tangible physical
goods.  Does this mean that when we do not have enough food, we are
still dealing with this essential conflict?  What happens if you do
not get enough food or shelter?  You lose your ability to interact
with a separate reality, you weaken.  You lose your ability to
interact with separate consciousnesses, you cannot act.  So this loss
takes the form of pain and experience negative sensations.  These
sensations tell you that, when you die, you will experience a high
degree of separation between self and reality, between self and
others; you will not act, you will not express.  It is the same
conflict in a different expression.

In physical conflict, or conflict of the mind, there is a thing, which
is scarce, and when not present in sufficient supply, consciousness
loses separate reality, and loses its ability to coexist with other
consciousnesses.  The things being a physical item or a conceptual
battle only means it affects a different portion of the balanced
equation.  In the mind all is concept.

The conflict is expressed as conciousnesses cooperating and
conflicting with one another in a conceptual evolution engine.  When
the produces succeeds, and produces a surplus of balance in the
equation of the needs of consciousness, consciousness branches out to
create new consciousnesses.

Here a temptation presents itself to derail the analysis by claiming
an innate difference between this scarcity of base consciousness'
needs when talking about the inner world of individual human thought
and the outer world of experience.  So it's important to reiterate
that there is a single common factors between the two, and the effects
of the divergence are beside the point, they only serve to differing
areas within the equation.  The basic needs of consciousness, a
reality and someone to share it with, are what is at stake.  To claim
that this scarcity only exists on the inside and not the outside or
vice-versa is irrelevant.  What we call "outside" IS the scarce
reality INSIDE.

Recall that the topics which most directly apply to scarcity are the
most taboo in conversation, because they can make competitors out of
unwary participants.  Therefore the ultimate expression of the central
conflict is the most taboo of all; this is the taboo against the
expressions of non-reality, which negates our basic needs for shared
reality and togetherness.  Perhaps there are ways of expressing
non-reality so strongly that consciousness will never be capable of
experiencing them.

** Pressures on Interpretation of Reality

What if it were possible to eliminate our shared reality; to eliminate
the separation of consciousnesses by completely internalizing reality;
to make all consciousnesses one, and reality imaginary?  If so, then
what does it mean for this to "be" possible?  It seems consciousness
revolts against the lack of reality.  But, what if this were not
possible?  We would never know each other, all consciousnesses is
doomed to eternally miscommunicate, never knowing ourselves, subject
to the whims of the hard-edged rock of reality.

In these two fears, what would seem to be a binary set of mutually
exclusive possibilities simply are NOT binary nor mutually exclusive.
Consciousnesses start and stop, merge and diverge, understanding forms
and dissolves.  Everything is simultaneously one reality, and at the
same time, is separated, and the real is both real, and only real as a
conception of the mind.  This superposition of conflicting ideas is
integral to consciousness.  When the concept of the superposition
becomes unbalanced, aspects of reality "bridge" in the mind and cause
what could be called short-circuits in the sense of reality.

It is common within this paradox that thoughts spiral in to despair
loops.  For example, I despair because I'll never be able to truly
express myself to another person; reality is a cage which stifles my
expression.  The despair is so strong because logically it cannot be
curtailed; there can never be a bottom, and any logical attempts to
disprove it will all leak.  As a result the internal conflict in the
mind over these issues becomes a physicalized phenomena; it becomes
reality itself.  To escape the cage, you must become the cage; you
must acknowledge the conflict as an aspect of yourself.  This can
prevent further troubles; if the cage is the problem, then you have
just become the problem in order to escape it.  An unkind perspective
may label this as sin -- "You *are* the conflict?! And that's OK?!"
However the sin is more likely to be the act of blaming external
reality for your inability to express yourself in the first place.  A
kind perspective will label it as following the way of life;
surrendering to a higher force, accepting the necessity of your
situation.  The aspect of your interpretation becomes the sole factor
in determining the success or failure of your grappling with the
despair.

** Spiritual vs. Physical

It is unquestionable that there is a connection between physical
reality and the reality of the mind; the mind is anchored within
physical reality.  Thoughts reflect the physical, and thoughts ARE the
physical.  Therefore the nature of the linkage cannot be fully
rationalized.  There are commonly said to be two different ways of
looking at the mind's relationship to physical reality; a physical and
a spiritual way.

In the physical view, our minds 'run' like programs upon a
deterministic computer which is what we call reality.  Reality is a
bunch of "stuff" which behaves according to laws of nature.  Our minds
are composed of this stuff, and the existence of our consciousness is
contingent upon that stuff's existence in a specific configuration.
If the stuff stops forming the correct configuration, then our minds
are no longer manifest.  The stuff itself appears to have its own
complicated history from which we are separated by the necessity of
configuration.  The physical view does not support any proven
communication between consciousnesses that isn't the result of
vocalizations, signals, etc.  Science is the arbiter of what is and is
not included in the physical view.  Science itself is self-admittedly
incomplete, however.

The spiritual view, at its core, is essentially not different from
this, except that the spiritual world changes the perspective of the
narrative to say, definitively, that the minds reality is more than
what science and the physical view has been able to so far
demonstrate.  It claims the physical world as demonstrated by science
is shaped by mind to some degree through methods not scientifically
proved, or at least not yet proven.

Therefore, essentially, spirituality is a belief in some amalgamation
of telepathy and telekinesis, however spiritual beliefs vary wildy in
the rules they propose to govern the behavior of these phenomena.

Most spiritual beliefs posit that this telepathy/telekinesis occurs
only via the mediation of some meta-consciousness or
meta-consciousnesses (god or gods) which have the sole true dominion
over these powers and manipulation of it and manipulation of others'
consciousnesses.  These beliefs also typically make a separation
between these diety's level of mediation of the acts we take in the
scientifically-proven physical world versus these "other" methods for
manipulating reality.  The physical world with its laws and
determinism are seen as a sandbox which is suited to direct control by
humans, while the "other" methods of manipulation of reality are
considered mediated.

It is a common point of view that, as science has increased in
complexity and grown to explain more phenomena and reveal more hidden
reality, that this has taken mindshare aware from spiritual beliefs.
Much of what was once said to be the work of god or gods is now
explained directly as a physical phenomena acting out a series of
laws.  This in and of itself is not necessarily a detriment to
spiritual beliefs, after all; the answer "god did it" is just as valid
regardless of how deeply we understand a phenomena's inner workings.
However this effect has had a great detriment to spiritual
institutions which cling to dogmatic beliefs which science negates.
In counterpoint to this, however, many of the discoveries made have
hinted that our universe at its basic level is much stranger than the
traditional physical view has long held.  Many see this as a benefit
to spiritual interpretations of reality; all the efforts of science
have not been able to disprove spiritual interpretation, and as
scientific conjecture involving extra dimensions, quantum uncertainty
and parallel realities become more common, it appears to the
accommodating spiritualist that science is becoming more and not less
compatible with their world views.

Most people, even those who consciously subscribe to the pure physical
interpretation and discount any experience without physical
explanation as delusion, nonetheless act in such a way that indicates
a spiritual interpretation.  Strange things happen, some ways of being
end up being more survivable than others, produce better results, and
the water of their lives flows to follow these ways.  There is a wall
between the subconscious and conscious mind.  Dreams, superstitions,
vague feelings, they all flow like water from the subconscious.  Our
expectations betray what we tell ourselves is impartiality when
interpreting events.  We are not beings capable of pure rationality,
we can only conceive of it.

** How Spiritual Interpretations Work

Our expectations are based upon experience, and shaped by our dreams,
wishes and fears.  We are conditioned by reality to read the signs of
a situation to provide guidance.  These signs may give us a hard
physical reason to shape an expectation, such as moving out of the way
of a falling tree, or they may give us an anecdotal reason, such as
noticing that wearing a certain shirt makes people be more friendly
towards you, but you can't figure out why.  Later, we may find out
why, or it may remain a mystery forever, or it may turn out that
people are friendlier because we expect them to be, or it may turn out
that there is no pattern at all.

The same reading of signs occurs when communicating with other
consciousnesses besides ourselves.  Language is built upon a shared
symbolic significance.  Spirituality typifies phenomena of telepathy
and telekinesis following these same rules; dream interpretation is
composed entirely of the interpretation of imagery as symbolic.  God
is said to speak to one through signs and serendipity in situations.
Things are said to be "meant to be".  The typical manifestation of
telekinesis is not in breaking rules of physics by manipulating
objects directly, but by affecting situational harmonies and
resonances, by erecting signs and symbols in the inanimate.

When attempting to read signs and symbols, and make spiritual
interpretations of any sort, selection bias quickly comes in to play.
If you look for something, you'll find it.  Selection bias is
inherently invisible to the observer; if it were visible it would
cease to be bias.  In this way it is like an echo of quantum
uncertainty; measuring a situation changes it, in that your perception
of the situation is changed by your thinking about it in a fluid
manner.

Just like there is a technique for analyzing the outside world for
signs and symbols, when one listens inside to inner voices, there is a
technique which is essentially the same.  Essentially we create a
vacuum of potentiality which is "filled up" by anything which enters
it.  For example one flips a coin so the universe may decide something
for him, or any other probablistic act.  In so doing you create a
situation where it remains plausible that the universe is just acting
in its normal way, but where you can easily interpret the outcome as
being some kind of telepathic/telekinetic message from an outside
consciousness.  If you allow your mind to "wander", or try to think up
"random" thoughts, you are performing the same act.  The key is to
perform something with an unknown outcome, while perserving plausible
deniability for reality.  Drug experiences follow this template, as do
mental illnesses, near-death experiences, extreme trauma, etc.

This act of controlled, feedback-encouraging interpretation of reality
is the basis for all spiritual non-scientific phenomena.  When you
subscribe to this sort of interpretation of reality, everything has
meaning, even when its meaning is to have no meaning.

*** Test feedback

There is a mental process wherein you want to 'objectively' decide how
true something is, so you take the position in your mind that it is
true, and then feel how much the thing coincides with your feeling.
You tell yourself this is the only way to know for sure, but that is a
lie.  You already know as much are you are going to.  You are creating
a fold in your consciousness which is inaccurate.  Test feedback is
inherent.

The mirror of yourself will always lie when you look in it to see if
it will lie.  When you do this, if the result is what you want to
believe, you believe it.  If you don't like it, what can you do?  You
have just created a perception that you cannot change it.  Now you
must lie to yourself or admit that you were lying to yourself in
performing the test.

So, testing your own mind is an inherently flawed concept.  You
already know all the truth about yourself you are going to know
immediately before beginning the test.

** Communications Between Consciousnesses

Communication between consciousnesses takes many forms; much more than
just words.  First, cadence, tone and vocal irregularities decorate
our words with a very rich and analog channel of metadata about the
words being said.  This side-channel data is simple, yet affects us
deeply.  Typically what hits you when someone delivers an emotional
speech is not the words but how the words are said, how these side
qualities illustrate the feelings and emotions of the speaker.  These
feelings and emotions are analog, consciousness wave type of
phenomena.  Words point you to where the feeling is, but the side data
illustrates what the feeling is in a much more refined way.  Body
language also provides this information.  All of this contributes
towards the concept of "presence" which people commonly understand to
be a general all-encompassing interpretation of a consciousness'
disposition.  Someone might open a car door strangely, sit quietly,
stare, breathe slowly and pronouncedly, and all these things
contribute to a presence.

It is indisputed that different consciousnesses in different
situations carries a variable amount of this sense of presence.  The
term "presence" is used because it indicates that the consciousness
does not only exhibit outward signs and signals which you interpret
rationally to have meaning, but that their consciousness and yours
become synced up in a particular way such that you begin to feel
intuitions about their mood or feelings.  It's common in these
situations to anticipate what someone is thinking without knowing how
it is you do so.  The variable amount of presence then often takes on
a mystical, deep quality, because it affects you without you knowing
precisely why or how.

When you are being affected by a presence in this way, if you were to
repeat the same sort of "sensing" which is talked about above in "How
Spiritual Interpretations Work", you will be likely to come up with
meaningful and verifiably true results.  The subconscious registers
others' presence deeply and in a way such that you are able to
essentially run their thoughts, their consciousness, in your head, as
if they were simulated within your mind.  If you were to randomly mix
up words, and then interpret them as being messages from the remote
presence, your interpretations would generally coalesce around the
others' true feelings, because you could "feel out" your subconscious
simulation of them.  Of course, you would also come up with false
interpretations, because after all you are only guessing, but those
guesses would coalesce towards a communicative truth.  The resolution
of truth possible in this manner is a direct proportion to
understanding you had of their overall presence.

Even if you were no longer being affected by the other's presence, and
they have left, and you attempted to apply the same random guess
technique to your memories of it, you'd still find a bias towards
communicative truth.  And even if you apply the technique to matters
of which the other person is unaware, you can likely still come up
with meaningful information.  And when you reconvene with that person,
it is possible that they become aware of your awareness of their
awareness.

*** Reality Transmission

When you are exposed to another consciousness, inevitably you begin to
learn to see things the way they see them, through interpretation of
their presence.  These ways can either be accepted or rejected.  When
they are accepted, subconscious information is more likely to flow
between your selves.  The extent to which your view of reality is
shaped by outside forces, and other consciousnesses viewpoints, is
typically invisible, because the line between your view of outside
forces and the forces themselves is not visible.  Detecting the
leading edge of your perceptions would seem to be impossible.  So then
your realities are at that point creating themselves, feeding upon one
another and upon reality itself, some of this occuring before either
consciousness has a chance to actually interpret the information.

**** Varying Degrees of Mediation

As the sphere of connected consciousnesses grows, and more people take
part in modern, highly connected reality, the shared reality effects
also grow, though they as a whole become slower to change and less
controlled, as consciousnesses intercommunicate with one another to
pass along information.  Society forms and emergent consciousnesses
form.

Emergent consciousnesses may inhabit a mediating layer between human
consciousnesses and proper reality.  This theory holds up fine even in
the constraints of the known scientific world.

Mediating consciousnesses of this sort could also "buffer" our sense
of time.  A container consciousness, though it experiences time
normally, could pause and resume the contained consciousness'
experience whenever it wanted, feeding it information when needed or
even completely altering the information in transit.  This would mean
that, to the contained consciousness, the mediating consciousness
knows the future, when in fact, it is already in the future, and is
just letting us play catch up, like a DVR with a large buffer.  To
believe in nested consciousnesses almost requires that this be true to
some extent.

Spiritual beliefs hold that these emergent consciousnesses hold much
more power than what is scientifically known, and that gods and/or god
roam through time and space, altering reality, altering human
consciousnesses, sending out signs and symbols of communication,
promise or warning.  They often hold that what we know as reality is
created within this realm, this layer between our consciousnesses and
reality, and that the bisection of reality from consciousness is
carried out here.  Spiritual beliefs also tend to ascribe power to
human consciousness to alter this layer in ways not scientifically
known.

**** Hierarchy

Just as within the scientific group consciousness we understand there
to be social hierarchies, within the non-scientific realm there are
typically posited to be hierarchies as well.  In both cases, different
levels of these hierarchies are said to have different power over
different "levels" of reality.

Even within a single consciousness, there is a hierarchy of needs and
thought.  Typically these hierarchies mimick the perceived exterior
hierarchies, blending and balancing together in different ways to
maximize the needs of that consciousness to fulfill itself.
Consciousness attempts to strike a balance which causes the internal
hierarchy to become completely integrated in to the exterior.  In such
a state, it may not be necessary to differentiate inner hierarchy from
outer hierarchy.

Hierarchies contribute variation and stability to systems.  In order
for life to achieve a goal over chaos, the system of choice ends up
being hierarchial, typically tree-like structures, like roots of a
tree, or a family tree, through replication and variation.

Upper levels of a hierarchy contain the lower levels, and not
vice-versa.  This does not necessarily speak to any specific
providence, or statements of superiority, but only causal control.
Ancestors are said to control their descendents' existence, but not
their eventual behavior.  A god may be said to control a man's
existence and his eventual behavior, or he may not.  In both
situations it would seem to be the case that the container at least
partially controls the contained existence, and at least partially
controls the contained behavior.  The control gradient seems to be the
only basis for differentiating one consciousness from another, but
when considering nested consciousness the word control takes on
multiple meanings.

Built within the conception of hierarchies is the conception of
shifting power from one hierarchial configuration to another.
Typically this occurs in response to environmental factors existing
outside the conception of the hierarchy, which put pressure on
elements of the hierarchy that cause a demand for reorganization.  The
process of reorgranization of consciousness causes conflicts and
conflicts cause pain, cause a need to re-solve the equations of
dynamic tension between the need for a defined reality and the need
for defined lines between consciousnesses.  The environmental factor
is nearly invetibaly a component of some other hierarchy.

Just as an individual consciousness' hierarchies are shaped by the
hierarchies of the world it inhabits, the shifting power internal to
that consciousness affects its hierarchies as well.

When an individual consciousnesses' internal hierarchies are in
harmony with external hierarchies, it is no longer necessary for that
consciousness to track the distinction between them.  This is the
fulfillment of the paradox of being reality and simultaneously being
separate from it.  This produces a harmony, a sensation of flow with
the external world.  The sensation a consciousness experiences as
being a part of the external hierarchy is not just a sensation or a
mind trick but an actual reality by any sensible definition of
consciousness.  Therefore at least to some extent our consciousness is
not "trapped" in our bodies, but resides there by choice.

Life seems to be composed of a process of creation and improvement of
such hierarchies, serving to provide more and more solutions to
consciousness' desires for a separate reality and the existence of
other consciousnesses.  When the hierarchies achieve a state where
they produce a surplus of harmony in a solution to the paradoxes of
existence, they undertake branching out in to new territory, in order
to produce more surplus in other existences.  Anywhere this process
can occur, it does occur, so the creation of new existences in which a
hierarchy may grow is itself part of the solution to the problems of
separate reality.

** Matrix

This does not mean that the realities produced during this process are
fraudulent for having been produced by such a system.  Dystopian views
of this sort lead to a sort of "The Matrix" interpretation of reality
where consciousness' failures have placed it in everlasting servitude
to emotionless machines.  The closest analogs to this situation seem
to be places where solutions to the paradoxes of existence are poorly
formed and are in short supply, and as a result the hierarchy has
become extremely 'thin' and reactive in its behavior.

Consider that if it were possible for consciousness to exist in a
deterministic system, like a computer, it would not be necessary to
run the computer program for that consciousness to exist.  Rather it
would be necessary to run the computer to form a bridge between your
reality and that of the deterministic consciousness.  From this bridge
you could observe the consciousness within the computer.  If you were
to stop it and start it again from the same point in memory, the
deterministic consciousness would not experience an interruption.  The
deterministic consciousness, being deterministic, exists now as much
as it ever has or will exist.

It gets more complicated when you consider what it means if you alter
the deterministic consciousness, especially if you alter it in
response to some aspect of it that you've seen.  At that point, though
you are still only observing the deterministic consciousness, it is
now one which is much more connected to your reality.  The more you
alter it, the more it becomes a mirror of your consciousness.  Of
course, by creating the program to visualize the consciousness, you
already did a good deal towards making it a mirror of yourself, but in
interacting with it and generating feedback it becomes much more part
of your reality.

This multiverse-style interaction may be an indicator that
deterministic consciousness can not be "real" consciousness, because
it only mirrors the consciousness that created it.  Or, it may be that
this is how all consciousness exists; after all you must conceive of
another consciousness before interacting with it.

These complications can be extended to consciousness which is not
known to be deterministic; for example, if I have free will, and I
decide to say something to another, am I changing the universe or am I
choosing to perceive one particular universe amongst many choices
which I could have made?  If I put someone in a position where they
can only do one thing or another, am I cutting off their access to
universes which they could have chosen?  Or am I creating fewer
choices for myself, like a lens through which I look at their being?

** Collapses

When a hierarchy inadequately handles an external force, disharmony in
the dynamic tension results in disfunction of the hierarchy.  This
disfunction typically takes the form of feedback loops resulting in the
line between consciousness and reality taking damage, and/or the line
between consciousness and other consciousness being damaged.

When the hierarchy being discussed is an individual consciousness, the
damage to the line between consciousness and reality takes the form of
depersonalization, hallucination, disconnection.  The damage to the
line between consciousness and other consciousness takes the form of
social paranoia, hallucinations involving hearing voices, delusions of
persecution, etc.

The nature of hallucination and the voices can be approached with the
same methods as dream-reading, in that they are all significant of the
overall cause, and their proper interpretation leads to an increase in
sanity.  Sanity is a self-balancing system in this way, but
manifestations of hallucination represents failures of the
consciousness to integrate aspects of reality in to its self-balancing
routine, and they spill out on to the floor of consciousness bereft of
context and meaning, and they spill faster than the sufferer has any
chance of reconstructing them.  This spilling relieves pressure on
some aspects but causes voids in other areas, and is nearly always a
symptom of feedback, like a rotating storm in a weather system, or a
half-broken engine, the faults reoccur in the same way repeatedly.
This leads to feelings of intense helplessness as the consciousness
experiences pain in a stimulus-response fashion, but yet finding
itself unable to find a way to prevent the stimulus from occurring.

In order to cope with these perceptions of fractured reality, hearing
voices, etc, it should be remembered that what you are perceiving is
completely, or mostly, unreal.  It is the sound of the hierarchies of
consciousness attempting to correct your consciousness to bring it
back to the real.  Whether those hierarchies are internal or external
to your consciousness is not a question which you are in a position to
perceive, nor should the answer to that question have any bearing on
your response.  Recall that internal hierarchies are reflections of
external hierarchies, and there is no way to definitively find a line
between them.  As consciousness attempts to see reality in this way,
where the symptoms are more a solution to your problems then a cause
of them, the cause of any difficulties consciousness finds in doing so
are reflections of the root cause itself.

The content of voices often need not be taken literally.  They are
like triggers in consciousness hierarchies firing almost involuntarily
in response to a perceived threat.  Respect the system which produces
them, even if the content is hideously objectionable, even if it seems
sicker than the thoughts which seem to trigger them.  Try as hard as
possible to find love for the piece of consciousness that produces
them, and attempt to discern what its needs may be in respect to its
position in its hiearchies, and how your thoughts interfere with those
needs.

If the perception is that the voices are from external consciousnesses
or external hierarchies, consider that this does not necessarily make
them "real"; if two consciousnesses become synchronized via any
low-level synchronicity, this does not make thoughts which are
produced any more or less real than if they were internal to a
consciousness.  If two consciousnesses have the same imaginary thought
through benefit of synchronicity this does not necessarily make the
thought suddenly less imaginary.  It could easily be argued by the
same logic that it makes the thought more imaginary.  Thoughts do not
necessarily "belong" to anyone.

In fact it it is important to regard inner voices as mostly unreal.
To regard them as real is breaking through the hierarchy of reality,
it instantly unbalances the solution to the paradoxes of consciousness
that reality represents.  If consciousness finds itself enforcing the
opinion that inner voices are real, contrary to external reality's
feedback, it is going against important consciousness hierarchies.

Consider that the inner voices are your projection of others upon your
inward self.  If you have delusions that everyone knows you because
you hear the voices of those you do not know inwardly, this does not
make them real.  Those people do not know you.  The content of the
voices and comments you imagine others making against you in reality
are much more yours than theirs.  You are reflecting your reality off
them.  It would be immoral to take what they 'say' as mostly-theirs,
unless they are actually things truly said directly to you without
pretense in reality.  Before this, you are doing yourself, and them, a
disservice by acting on false pretenses.

The psyche may try to convince you that it is safer to assume
something you heard someone say is about you, but this is a trap.
Your mind is addicted to misinterpreting reality and tricking you in
to thinking self-debasement is a virtue.  One should recognize that
'discarding reality' in favor of delusions is sacrificing the
essential balance of your consciousness.