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

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Website: www.tomcampbell.info

Book: My Big Toe: Book 3 of a Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics, and Metaphysics: Inner Workings by Tom Campbell

Mindfulness According to Tom Campbell

First let's say mindfulness isn't a thing you do, it's a thing you become.

Mindfulness, of course, is not a real precise term. So there's probably at least four or five, or six ways to look at it. And when you look at an each of those different ways, you'll get a little better idea of just what mindfulness is. Let me kind of state it and then restate it in multiple ways. Being mindful means that you have some discipline with your consciousness, and undisciplined consciousness is kind of zinging off on all sorts of thoughts and places and things.

To be mindful requires you to have some discipline. So mindfulness takes a little work, it's not something that's just a trivial thing to do. It takes work for people to develop those skills. Mindfulness is about whatever it is you're doing, you're doing it purposefully, you're aware that you're doing it, and you're doing it, you know, for a reason. And you're aware of that reason.

Which means it's the opposite of being on automatic, it's the opposite of being a zombie. It's the opposite of just kind of drifting through life, turning the crank that you always turn, and you're so habituated to that crank that you just never think about really much of anything. You just repeat every day, sort of like it was the last day; you get up, you go to work, you push buttons, you work your mouse at work, and you come home and you eat dinner, and you watch TV; it's that sort of thing. So that's not mindful, that's just letting your life run on automatic.

Mindfulness is kind of the first step in getting to know who you are. It's getting to know your own consciousness. It will help you answer your own question, ‘What Is Consciousness'. And until you're mindful, you don't really know who you are. You make choices.

The Birth of Big Toe Theory

The way I created it was I looked at all the facts that I knew about consciousness, and that was after about 35 years of studying consciousness. And I had two parallel careers. One was in consciousness research, and one was in physics. The conscious research I did at night, and physics I did in the daytime.

So basically, after a long time, I thought I knew enough about consciousness to make a good consciousness model. So I took all the facts of consciousness and I took all the facts of the physical world, which I knew most of because I'm a physicist. And I came up with an idea theory, a model that would explain all of those facts on both sides, and explain everything we know now. Which means in the objective and the subjective world, as well as make projections about things that we don't know. So that's how I made it. And that's called a TOE; a theory of everything.

Now, Einstein coined that word, ‘theory of everything', when he was trying to unite relativity and quantum physics because those two really have a foundational level, they don't really get along with each other too well. Each one has an assumption that the other one denies exists.

So Einstein knew there was something bigger. There was had to be something bigger above them in the hierarchy of causality. Something above them that could explain both of them. And then they would be kind of both part of