This is a piece I wrote during the beginning of a school day two days ago. I was inspired in part by an anime (yes, an anime) I saw beforehand, but I had mostly been thinking about this stuff in the back of my mind for a while previously - for years, in fact - and never put into words. I have now. It’s highly debatable, makes MANY assumptions, but if refined and investigated could one day be, possibly, a solid theory.

I should point out first that it is NOT, contrary to what is written, consciousness that I am discussing. It is something else entirely, as someone pointed out to be, for consciousness already has a very concrete definition that the contents of this essay don’t entirely fall into. Therefore, I’m clearly discussing something that has no name - and I call it, for those purposes, “consciousness.”

Meditations on Thought and Consciousness

In this mediation I shall explore how memories play a role in “consciousness” – a person’s ability to control their own body. I will also provide a deeper definition of “consciousness” and establish it as a basis for building a new human being.

Consider first the following preposition: I have cloned myself. The clone is “perfect,” a one-to-one copy of me, my current body in its current age, and my memories. The memories inside the clone are recent enough that it will awaken and know that a cloning was going to take place, but not know specifically that it is the clone. The question arises: Which body in the room is my own? More importantly, which mind in the room is my own? Am I me, or is the clone me?

Analyzing the situation, clearly both the original and the clone have the same memories, and therefore neither can dispute any different aside from the memories that form after the point of the cloning’s completion. The clone will believe it is the original – and it is. But so is the original. What is it that sets these two bodies apart and makes them different people?

Here I establish “consciousness.” Metaphysically dissect any being, and at its core you will find the being’s “consciousness,” much in the way that the brain and heart are the core of the physical being. In essence, the consciousness is the mechanism that a body uses to control itself. It is not the brain – it controls the brain. No two beings have the same consciousness – if two were to have the same, one mind would be in control of both beings. That mind would see out of two sets of eyes and control two sets of limbs. But because this is not how the world works – and because I am not in control of my clone’s body – we can safely assume that every being harbors its own consciousness.

I do not see or thing what my clone sees and thinks. So, both are me and they are alike in every way, and neither can make any mention of a difference. However, there is a different – in consciousness. In order to create the clone as it was, I could not simply “clone” my consciousness, for two are never the same; I had to create a new one. Thus killing the clone would not kill the original, killing the original would not kill the clone, and so on. However, as me, both are equally valid – the consciousness cannot be perceived (visually, subconsciously, or “felt”) by the human mind.

Preposition #2: Consider that a random human has been named God, and that the world is constantly rebuilt and renewed according to his or her thoughts and feelings. For example, should this God-person wish that a cloudy day become sunny, a new version of the universe is created whereby the day, in fact, sunny. This new universe overrides the former universe which is destroyed and completely replaced.

Not a soul would notice this transition – not even our randomly chosen God. In fact, because it will seem to everybody that it had been a sunny day all along, it is literally impossible for out chosen God to have any recollection of the changing the world at all.

Therefore, it is also impossible for God to know that he or she is God, because in any given rebuilding of the world all of its inhabitants’ thoughts and memories are rewritten – including God’s.

But if the previous universe, in which it was a cloudy day, was destroyed and replaced by an equally similar universe – exactly the same except for that one sunny day – what became of all the people of the previous universe? Consider the clone argument, whereby no two beings can harbor the same consciousness.

In Figure 1, the two universes are, for an infinitely short amount of time dt, side-by-side in the hyperspace that they reside in. We can simplify the situation by pretending that each universe has only one consciousness, instead of a consciousness for every living organism on the planet, and that each consciousness is different. God has rebuilt Universe A as Universe B, which as we established is Universe A where the day is sunny. Universe A has the consciousness of Universe A, completely destroyed in the recreation of the world.

Therefore, Universe A is dead, or rather killed, after the lapse in time dt covered by Figure 1. All of the memories and control over bodies is lost completely. In its place is put Universe B – a new consciousness, and equal memories. Therefore, because of its equal memories, Universe B believes that it is Universe A, although it is not Universe A, which no longer exists.

Is Universe A gone? Does Universe B = Universe A? The answer is that it does not. Although Universe B believes that its age is as old (or older) than Universe A, at the time of its creation Universe B is only dt seconds old. Therefore, every being and piece of matter in Universe B is only dt seconds old, but its inhabitants will believe – and have memories to “prove” – that they have been alive all 10, 20, 30, 40, etc. years of their lives.

However, in this transition, what really happened was a mass-cloning. From the point of view of Universe A, all living beings are dead. From the point of view of Universe B, all living beings believe that they are in Universe A (or that they are Universe A).

In Figure 2, we repeat this situation, but transfer over to the Universe B one person’s consciousness. This is the equivalent of being an outsider watching the universes override one another from a safe distance. When Universe B overrides Universe A, this chosen person’s consciousness, but not their body, will traverse through hyperspace into the new universe. Because consciousness has no relation or link to memories, the chosen person’s memories could be handled in several ways, depending possibly on the discretion of God. The following are some possible situations:

• The person’s memories are entirely replaced by memories from Universe B.
• The superposition of memories from Universe A and B occurs.
• The person gains no new memories, and retains only those from Universe A.

In any of these situations, the Universe A consciousness remains intact, and therefore this person will be able to notice a change in the universe detectable by any of their senses (most likely visual, as we are changing the day from cloudy to sunny) at the moment dt that the worlds replace one another.

To make the situation more interesting, let’s assume that out God, unbeknownst to him/her (for he/she can never know of their godliness), has chosen this person subconsciously as the single being to be transferred intact to Universe B. What are the motivations for doing so? We must consider that, when Universe B comes, it will be strikingly similar to Universe A – therefore, God’s “chosen one” would have been recreated and would have been nearly exactly the same as the Universe A counterpart.

Therefore, the motivation does NOT lie in transferring the memories, but the consciousness. In this situation, and all other similar ones, the consciousness is all that matters, because without it is it not the same person controlling the same body – it is a different, yet almost exact, duplicate. I did establish earlier that both the original and clone of myself would suffice as me, and no human or intelligent being would be able to perceive a difference between them – but we can only guess that God would be able to tell the difference somehow. Or if not, then perhaps the two worlds will not be so similar – perhaps this person would not have existed in Universe B and had to be transferred over. There are an infinite amount of situations possible.

This would also coincide with certain multiverse and/or parallel universe theories, where to go from one parallel world to the next a consciousness would have to travel between dimensions (3^rd and 4^th), or through hyperspace. Likewise, this also insinuates that pseudo-time travel would be possible simply by travelling to a universe that is both parallel and set in the past (past being defined by the traveler’s universe of origin).

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I do not seek to go into any kind of concrete theories, but rather continue with this wholly debatable topic. Remaining strictly in the metaphysics, let’s return to what I previously defined the consciousness as and quickly expand its definition to clarify its meaning.

Consciousness and memories are not linked, therefore replacing one’s memories while retaining the consciousness would not change the person who “sees out of the body’s eyes.” Imagine a camera and film – no two cameras have the same film (or else they would have the same pictures), and changing the body of the camera while retaining the film does not change the film (and hence the person).

This can go deeper. The consciousness then, as film, is the sole catalyst in the creation of thought. All mental processes must either pass through or originate from the consciousness for the consciousness to be able to control its “host” body. Now that I have established that consciousness, although unnaturally, can be transferred to a new body, any body that a consciousness inhabits is merely a “host.”

This could also have practical applications, albeit they might be literally impossible to achieve.

For a brief final moment, let’s return to the situation in which our random God has “chosen” a person to be transferred over to the new universe. I established previously that (a) this act was entirely subconscious and (b) that it was impossible for God to know of his or her godliness.

The theory is solidified and made continuous once God is removed from his or her own individual universe(s), or rather the consciousness of God is removed, and represented by hyperspace –thus the separate worlds are the product of a single consciousness all catalyzed by a single consciousness. In this fashion, God’s consciousness MUST be transferred from world to world when the reconstruction occurs, although God’s individual memories need not be maintained. The catalyst, however, will remain the same as many times as he or she recreated the world.

Whether or not this would mean a change of body or mind for God remains to be seen, but that is not entirely relevant.

~ Jason Rappaport.