A THEORY OF THE SOUL

What is a Host?

7.2.07

The `Meditation' in the last chapter anticipates further discussion of the apparent Host-Soul duality and how we can conceive of this in a way that answers our original questions. What may have emerged from your meditation is that the fact that how you ever came to experience being a person is the result of an extraordinary chance set of circumstances. Perhaps the answer to that is that logically it can't be any other way. You can't experience the seemingly much more likely scenario of your never being born; the feeling of astonishment at the coincidences that led to your being a living person can only arise if those coincidences actually happened! (You'll find a similar argument is used in another context later in this chapter).

Let's put this aside for the moment. In order to develop the Theory of the Soul it is necessary to consider what is meant by the idea of a 'Host' and to set this in the context of the nature of our Universe and its history. In doing this I am going to keep referring to very large quantities, time periods and spatial dimensions, and there is a very good reason for this that will become apparent in due course. Perhaps all of what now follows is familiar to you (and you may know far more about it than I do). Nevertheless it is important to set all of this out right at the start in order to be clear about what informs the Theory of the Soul and to be clear that it is vital to adhere to current scientific knowledge, or at least not to contradict it.

The known Universe

Our visible Universe consists of billions of galaxies which themselves consist of billions of stars. In fact, the average galaxy contains around 100 billion stars and there are over 100 billion galaxies. (A billion is 1,000 million.) The Sun is one star in a galaxy we call the Milky Way. Circling the Sun are nine planets (or eight if, as we now are required to do, we discount Pluto) of which the Earth is one. The Earth is just less than 8,000 miles in diameter and is 93 million miles from the Sun which itself has a diameter of 865,000 miles. The next nearest star to us is about 23 trillion miles away (a trillion being 1,000 billion). The stars in the Milky Way are assembled in a spiral shape, estimated to be almost 600,000 trillion miles in diameter.

Most scientists now believe that the universe was created between 13 and 15 billion years ago from an infinitesimal 'point' called a singularity. This is known as the 'Big Bang theory', and following the 'Big Bang' the Universe expanded dramatically and continues to expand. It is not just that the galaxies are moving away from one another: space itself is expanding.

Stars and galaxies only began to form hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang. Our sun is a little less than 5 billion years old and will last another 5 billion years. Stars mainly consist of the elements hydrogen and helium. (Most substances are compounds, i.e. combinations of two or more elements, just as words are combinations of different letters. However most elements, like the gases hydrogen and helium, can also exist on their own, and in fact helium always does). Hydrogen is the lightest element and helium is the next lightest. ('Lightness' or 'heaviness' is related to the number of particles [neutrons, protons and electrons] in each unit or atom of the element.) Like other stars, our sun emits energy by the fusion of hydrogen atoms to create the heavier helium atoms, and this is why it is so hot. In fact almost all of the visible Universe consists of hydrogen and helium.

Planets revolve around stars and consist of many more elements of differing heaviness. Some of these, like oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon, are essential to life as we know it, and higher life forms require many more elements to make the chemicals of which they are composed. On Earth there are over 90 naturally occurring elements.

Where do these heavier elements come from? There are minute traces of a few of these in stars but most are created when stars reach the end of their lives. They become increasingly hot and dense and this gives rise to conditions whereby increasingly heavier elements are created by fusion of atoms. Stars eventually explode, ejected their 'ash', in the form of these heavier elements, into space. A planet such as the Earth is made up of these elements, and their compounds, that have coalesced under gravity to form a sphere that orbits the Sun by mutual gravitational attraction.

Life

We are all made from this material. We are all stardust. That is all a Host is, in material terms. Nothing more. And we are recycled, the number of atoms in any adult human being is so colossal that it is possible that in any one of us are atoms that once formed part of every human being who ever previously lived. Ashes to ashes….

How life formed from non-life in the first place is not yet known but there is no reason to think that living material is anything more than a complex arrangement of non-living material existing in an environment that will sustain the properties that define it as 'living'. Primitive micro-organisms on Earth developed around 4 billion years ago. For hundreds of millions of years this was all there was. Then more complex multi- cellular organisms started to evolve, and so on.

It is not necessary to think of life as having any ultimate purpose or meaning other than, like the Universe, its just happens to exist. However, everything that we do, or any other form of life does, does have purpose and meaning within the life of that being. If, however, there is but one purpose for which we or any other species can be said to be 'designed', then it is for the purpose of reproduction – i.e. having offsprings.

Unlike primitive micro-organisms, more complex life forms (the vast majority) reproduce sexually. That is, in a single act of fertilisation, a cell (a sperm) from a male member of the species (the father) combines with a cell (an egg) from a female (the mother). In mammals this occurs in the mother's womb.

Within the sperm cell and egg is a set of chemicals called genes. These are elaborate protein structures which combine and, giving the right conditions in the womb (i.e. nutrition), determine the development of the foetus into a fully-fledged human being, the sex of that individual, his or her physical characteristics, important psychological characteristics, instincts and drives, susceptibility to various illnesses (and actual illnesses that are inherited from one or both parents), and so on.

In human beings, during conception millions of sperm cells are released by the male but only one will combine with (fertilise) the egg. There is usually only one egg to fertilise. The genes in the sperm vary from cell to cell but are similar within the same male. The same is true of eggs. This means that two siblings tend to be more similar than two people born of different fathers and mothers. They are still genetically different, however, because they are each made from a different sperm cell and a different egg. The same is true of non-identical twins. However, identical twins have the same genetic make-up because they share the same sperm and egg cells

Genes that give rise to physical and behavioural characteristics that promote survival tend to be passed down through succeeding generations. Those that tend to compromise survival (at least before and during the period the animal engages in procreation) tend not to be passed on. For example, genes that favour fast running will be advantageous to members of species that are preyed on by predators that chase them down (and indeed by such predators themselves). Those members that are deficient in such genes, or who have genes that cause them to be slow, will be more likely to be caught and killed before they have reached the age when they start reproducing and passing on these genes.

This process of 'natural selection' accounts for how species change over aeons of time as they adapt more to their environments and changes in their environments. It also accounts for how species may evolve into other species.

Design, coincidence or what?

One seemingly astonishing fact about the Universe is that for life in general to develop anywhere at all, and for sentient beings to evolve on Earth to contemplate these matters, a number of key factors need to be so precisely in (e.g. the strength of the gravitational force) that any minute variation could make it impossible for the Universe to exist in its present form and for life to exist. It seems rather like a cake that has been made from just the right ingredients in the right amounts, baked at the right temperature for the right length of time. Some people believe that this shows that there must be an intelligent designer – a God - who set the Universe on course by ensuring that everything was in place for it to evolve the way that it has.

One possibility that avoids the need for an 'intelligent designer' is that there is not just one universe originating from one Big Bang but many, perhaps even an infinite number. In some of these universes the forces that caused the stars and galaxies to form would be too weak. Result: no stars, no galaxies, a cold, dark place, no life anywhere, no intelligent beings anywhere, etc. In some, these forces are too strong; the universes are dense and hot and they contract after a few million year or even a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

If this is so (and why should there be one only universe?) then we live in one of those universes where, by chance, all essential conditions are just right for life to evolve somewhere and where, unlike in other universes, intelligent beings are able to deduce that conditions are just right for them to exist.

Things seem no less remarkable when we consider how human life could have evolved on Earth. This requires the Earth to be of a certain size, to be at a certain distance from the Sun, to rotate and orbit in a certain way, to have the right elements in the right proportions, to have the right atmosphere, and so on. Conditions must be stable enough for millions of years to enable species to diversify and evolve and this means that collisions between large meteors, asteroids and comets should be as rare as possible. Dinosaurs existed and evolved for about 170 million years but became extinct 65 million years ago. They disappeared because there was insufficient time for them to adapt to a sudden hostile environmental change which may have been caused by an asteroid or comet hitting the Earth. Thereafter mammals were the dominant class of large animal. Humanoid ancestors of our species homo sapiens appeared around 4 million years ago. In that period, had another comet or asteroid landed, our early evolutionary progress might have come to an end. Why are we so lucky? For one thing, the Earth has a moon and for another there are massive planets in our solar system such as Jupiter. These help to deflect extraterrestrial bodies such as asteroids and comets and allow evolution a longer and easier run.

There are disasters, natural and man-made, that could bring life on Earth to an end, or at least 'higher forms' of life, including conscious beings. Possibly, humans will be able to escape these, say by colonising the Moon or Mars. But eventually the Sun will begin to die and that will be the end of life in the solar system. Eventually too, life may not be possible anywhere in the Universe. The Universe will go on expanding and eventually become a cold and empty place; or it will stop expanding and reach a steady state; or it will stop expanding and begin contracting down to a singularity again ('the Big Crunch'). Whatever the case, at some point in its expansion, life will not be possible anywhere. The same is true of its early history before the formation of stars and planets. There is therefore a window in time in the history of the Universe when life, including intelligent life, is possible somewhere but not possible outside of it.

Back to the 'Host'

Now against this background, let's give some more thought to what a Host is. As I have said, a Host is an individual being. In the case of a terrestrial human being the Host is the body - or probably more accurately, the nervous system - of the person. Hence, when I speak of a Host I am being absolutely materialistic. A Host is a collection of matter that is capable of being aware of its own existence. I put 'is capable of' in italics for emphasis because I am not saying the Host, as I have defined it, is aware of itself. I shall in due course say that something else is necessary to make this happen, something outside of the Host. But more of that later.

Let's first work on the assumption that the only Hosts in the Universe are human beings on planet Earth and any similar beings on planets in other parts of the Universe.

A Host thus described is the entire body of an individual human being but when we are considering the capability of experiencing consciousness, we usually assume this to be a property of the nervous system, and in particular the higher centres of the brain. Let's therefore consider the nervous system in a little more detail.

The human nervous system consists of billions of tiny cells made from complex proteins. There are two main types of cell - neurons and glia. Most neurons consist of a cell body, a bush of fibres called dendrites, and an axon. Neurons 'fire' - that is they communicate with one another - typically by the transmission of a kind of electrical impulse along the axon from the cell body which is picked up on the cell bodies or dendrites of adjacent neurons. The impulse may then be transmitted to (excite) other nerve cells (this is going on all the time in billions of nerve cells) or the impulse may actually stop (inhibit) other neurons from 'firing'.

The impulse that travels down the axon consists of a wave of positive charges called the 'action potential' that is created by electrically charged particles called ions moving through the neuron membrane. When the action potential reaches the axon terminals at a region called the synapse, where it may cross the tiny gap (the synaptic cleft) to excite or inhibit adjacent neurons, but mainly the message is conveyed by the release of chemicals (neurotransmitters) that cross the synaptic cleft and stimulate or inhibit the adjacent neuron.

It is estimated that there are 1 trillion neurons in the human brain and each neuron has an average of 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. There are ten times as many glia as neurons, and glia are now believed to play an important part in information processing.

The synapse rules – OK? What happens at those miniscule junctions between trillions of nerve endings dictates much of human experience and behaviour and what may go wrong.

Summary

Think of the Universe as it is at present with billions of galaxies each containing billions of stars. Some - perhaps the majority, perhaps a sizable minority, perhaps only a few - of those stars will have planets. On some of those planets, which will be tiny in comparison to their suns, there may be forms of life, but it is likely that only on a small proportion of planets will conditions support life. On some of these, again probably a small minority, there will be forms of life that have consciousness and are self -aware.

If we think of all visible matter in the Universe – subatomic particles, elements and their chemical compunds – then those bits of matter that are self aware, what we are calling 'Hosts', comprise an indescribably tiny proportion of the known Universe: the equivalent of one grain of sand in our entire solar system maybe, or even less? Biologists often play down any suggestion that there is something particularly special about human beings or that homo sapiens represents some significant stage or end point in the evolutionary process in general. Evolution does not strive to create conscious intelligent beings such as homo sapiens. Successful evolution is to do with how a species adapts to its environment to maximise the survival potential of generations of offspring. Thus the signficance of consciousness is likely to be its survival value for the species, just as having horns on the head, fur on the body, a tail at the end of the body, or whatever, has survival value for members of other species. Also, we should be wary of describing anything in the Universe as 'remarkable', 'extraordinary', 'special', etc. as these qualities don't exist except in our subjective ways of categorising and judging things.

We can accept all of this and yet it takes aeons for matter to combine, interact and develop in such a way that collectively it has the ability of self awarenenss, of being a Host. As far as we know, this is only possible with matter that has the property of life and, again as far as we know, on bodies that we call planets, which orbit some stars. It has taken billions of years for conditions in the Universe to evolve to enable planets to form and for conditions on planets to be present, and present for long enough, to enable the evolution of higher forms of life.

Humankind once believed that the Earth was the centre of all things. Over time, astronomers have revealed to us the true vastness of the Universe and the fact that the Earth is a minute speck in this vast expanse. And yet the Earth is very special, because on it is something extremely rare, namely not just life but matter that has the property to be conscious of the world around it and of itself, matter in the form of what we have called 'Hosts'.

Meditation

In this meditation think of the material Universe, the billions of galaxies each comprising billions of stars. Think of what Hosts are - bits of matter that have this special property of self-awareness. Consider the minuteness of any such Host (and the sum total of all Hosts) in comparison with all the visible matter in the Universe. Imagine these Hosts as miniscule specks of light twinkling in remote parts of a vast expanse. Consider the extraordinary complexity of such matter and the activity that takes place. Think of this minuteness and complexity in relation to your own nervous system, the billions and billions of tiny neurons and the impulses that travel down them and across trillions of minute synapses. Consider now the extreme rarity of the occurrence of Hosts in the entire Universe. Think of the enormous amount of time it takes for matter to be so organised as to acquire the property of being a Host. And finally consider that there is a 'window of time' in the history of the Universe when Hosts are possible – maybe only billions of years after the Big Bang and up until the Universe has expanded to the point at which the last planets, and therefore life anywhere, including Hosts, will cease to be possible.

I Do, Therefore I Am

9.3.07

Consider again the Host that we identify as 'the human brain'. In the last chapter I noted that this extraordinary object consists of billions of units called nerves or neurons and that the total number of interconnections between all neurons is in the order of trillions. This allows for the possibility of an incomprehensible number of patterns of interaction over an interval of time (given the fact that any one neuron may be involved more than once in a circuit of activity).

We can postulate that it is the sheer scale and complexity of these interconnections that enables the Host, unlike almost all other physical entities, to have the property of awareness or consciousness: that is to 'have a mind'.

But, it must always be remembered that there is no such thing or entity as 'the mind'.

What we terrestrial humans experience as our 'mind' is the activity of our nervous system. Just as 'a kick' is what our leg does, 'a punch' is what our hand does, 'a nod' is what our head does, 'a wave' is what our arm does, our 'mind' is what our brain does. None of the aforementioned activities exist as entities.

Likewise, although we generally speak otherwise, we do not have memories. There are no such things as memories. They do not exist as entities. Depending on the type of memory, our conscious experiences create transient or permanent changes in our neurons that enable us to engage in the activity of remembering (e.g. remembering what we had for breakfast this morning, where we went for our last holiday, what we did on our 21st birthday, and so on).

Similarly, there are no such entities as thoughts: our brain is structured to enable us to engage in the activity of thinking. Likewise, there are no such things as perceptions: we perceive; there are no such things as images: we imagine; we do not have a dream: we dream.

When we stop waving our hand, the wave does not still exist somewhere; when we stop kicking, the kick does not carry on existing somewhere; when we stop punching, the punch has no continuing existence, and so on

So, when we stop remembering an event, the memory does not still exist somewhere; when we stop thinking, that thought does not still exist somewhere; likewise when we stop perceiving, imagining, or dreaming. (It may be argued that there are parts of the brain – e.g. the hippocampi of the right and left temporal horns – where it can be said that memories are 'stored' and that damaging or rendering non-functional these areas impairs or prevents the storage of memories and the retrieval of memories from storage (i.e. recall). We can only say that this is so 'in a manner of speaking'. When we remember something it is not simply the case that information stored in a particular neural network in memory storage is released into consciousness in a manner similar to obtaining a file form a filing cabinet or a photograph from an album. Remembering is a constructive activity involving diverse parts of the brain.

Thus our being is in our doing and when we stop doing we stop being. It is therefore possible to claim, 'I do, therefore I am'.

In particular, consciousness is what our brain does. When all activity in our brain, or any other machine capable of consciousness, ceases, that is, when a Host is no longer capable of doing all of these activities, including those expressed in consciousness, the Host ceases to be. Nothing of the memories, knowledge, abilities, feelings, personality and so on of the Host carries on afterwards, except in the sense of the lasting achievements and impressions on the world due to that person or animal.

There can be no survival of the individual personality after death. A Host survives – or more strictly, is viable as a Host - in a certain period of time between the limits defined as birth and death; in that time it occupies certain unique positions in space as it moves through the time period of its life. Outside of this space- time history it has no existence as a Host. Belief in its continued existence is, of course, very strong; the evidence however, is very weak.

Let me make it perfectly clear, therefore, that in the Theory of the Soul, there is no place for the idea that a person's soul or spirit lives on when he or she dies or 'passes over'. Once a person dies, any ability of that person to experience the world or any another imaginary world (heaven, hell, the spirit world, etc.) dies with him or her. It follows that, once dead, he or she cannot communicate with any living person and vice versa.

Meditation

In this thesis I rarely quote explicitly other people's published words and ideas, even though I make extensive use of them. The reason for this is that, with the exception of one or two ideas of my own (which people in the past have probably thought of anyway) almost all of what I base the Theory of the Soul on is derived from general knowledge and theories and not from the ideas unique to any particular individual. However, I must introduce the present meditation by giving due acknowledgement to Dr Paul Broks. Dr Broks is a neuropsychologist (and, as it happens, a former colleague of mine) who, in 2003, wrote an acclaimed book describing his experiences and reflections working with brain- damaged patients. The book is entitled Into the Silent Land and is published by Atlantic Books.

Towards the end of his book, Dr Broks describes a futuristic fantasy, a kind of thought experiment that powerfully conveys some of the mysteries that the Theory if the Soul is attempting to solve. So here goes.

Imagine that at some time in the future, scientists have developed a method of 'teleportation' whereby objects, including human beings, may be transported from one place to another at the speed of light. Imagine that the system is in regular use to transport workers who are commuting from the Earth to the Moon and back, just as people nowadays commute, say from Oxford to London and back, on high-speed trains.

What happens is that commuter enters a scanner, say on the Earth (perhaps like an MRI scanner). The operator presses a button and the scanner plots the exact co- ordinates of every atom in your body, maybe 10 billion billion billion of them. (The vigilant reader will immediately refer to problems in exactly locating the positions of atoms, but let's suppose that these problems have been overcome.) This information is encoded on a computer and transmitted at the speed of light to a sophisticated machine on the Moon where the information is immediately decoded and you are reconstituted atom for atom from local materials. You are ready to continue your journey to work by more conventional means.

Now, exactly at the point of transmission of the scanned information to the Moon, your body on the Earth is instantaneously annihilated. Any delay in the annihilation process would mean that the teleported you would be very slightly different from you at your last moment on the Earth, and this is not allowed to happen. All this applies to the same journey in reverse, from the Moon to the Earth.

So let's suppose you are a scientist in this futuristic scenario, living on Earth but having a job that means you have to commute to the Moon and back every working day. You set out from home one particular morning to the teleportation station, maybe thinking about what you want to achieve at work that day. Once there you are enclosed in the scanner. The transmission of your atomic co-ordinates to the Moon and your reconstitution there will take time but, apart from the change of scenery, there will be no discontinuity apparent to you. Once reconstituted you then make the journey to your workplace on the Moon, still thinking about what you want to achieve that day but also, for example, reminding yourself that your partner has asked you to get some wine from the supermarket on your way back from the station that evening. (Even in this advanced civilisation, some pleasures are obtained in the traditional way.)

Suppose that your day goes well and the time comes for you to make your way back to the teleportation station on the Moon as usual, thinking of what you have accomplished that day. You get in the scanner and wait for the operator to press the button that starts the scanner which scans and encodes the atomic information on computer and transmits it to the teleportation station on Earth for the decoding and reconstitution stages, while simultaneously annihilating your body on the Moon.

You lie in the scanner anticipating that, within what will seem like a brief moment, you will be back on Earth. You suddenly remember that you have to call for some wine at the supermarket on your way back home.

Suppose that you are then withdrawn from the scanner, expecting to find yourself on Earth but to your surprise you are still at the Moon teleportation station. The rather flustered operator apologises and explains that there has been a slight technical hitch that won't take a moment to fix and then you'll be back in the scanner. When you ask her what has happened she explains that the scanning, encoding and transmission phases have gone exactly to plan but the annihilation phase has yet to be enacted. 'But don't worry – it'll only take a minute to put right'.

Now, this where this mediation exercise really starts, with you waiting for the fault to be rectified and the whole process completed. Think what is happening back on Earth at this moment. Somebody at the teleportation station there is now checking out, thinking of what he or she has achieved that day, heading off for home but reminding himself or herself to call for some wine at the supermarket, etc. etc. And that person is YOU, the same person who has made this journey many, many times and who has no inkling that this time something different has happened and the annihilation phase on the Moon has not been completed.

Forget whether all of this will ever be technically possible. Think about the implications, the paradoxes, the consequences and so on. Does the YOU who is still on the moon want the annihilation stage to be carried now? If so, what happens to that YOU. Is there any real difference between what has happened on this occasion and what happened on all previous occasions? What are the implications of this for the idea of a Host and a Soul?

More on the Host-Soul Duality

7.5.07

It's important to keep recapping to be sure of the direction in which we are heading.

I have, for the sake of argument, referred to a possible duality between Host and Soul. Maybe such a duality will prove unworkable the further we proceed, but let's accept it for the moment yet be careful to be clear what we mean by these terms. Also I have to confess that much of what is to follow is a very simplistic and naïve way of approaching the questions posed by the concept of a Soul. Nevertheless I do not believe that this invalidates the ideas that are to be developed as we proceed.

I have stated that the Host is a physical entity that, by the complexity of its structure and functioning, is able to experience consciousness. I am putting this in a rather vague way for reasons that will be apparent later; it's also a good idea now to say that I am not going to take much trouble pinning down exactly what I mean by 'consciousness'.

To simplify matters, we are just considering one type of Host, namely homo sapiens on the planet Earth. Perhaps we should define Host more precisely, say as 'the nervous system' of homo sapiens, but this is not a crucial matter at this stage.

Consider one unique Host, John Smith, born at 02.07 hours on May 4th 1919, died at 13.27 hours on August 19th 2003. Let's refer to John Smith as Host [John Smith].

I have made it clear that the identity of John Smith - his personality, thoughts, memories, attitudes beliefs, and so on - constitutes the activity of Host [John Smith]. Before Host [John Smith] existed, John Smith did not exist in any kind of way and John Smith ceased to exist once Host [John Smith] died - there is no 'spirit' of John Smith that has lived on since.

Now, when he was alive, John Smith, like many people, asked himself the kind of questions that I listed in Chapter 1. In particular he asked, 'What will happen to me when I die?' He accepted the previous stipulations that his identity as John Smith ceases on his death. He saw no reason to accept religious notions about meeting his Creator, going to heaven or hell, and so on.

He therefore realised that either death means oblivion or, after his death he is another sentient being, let's say Tom Green. ('Another sentient being' might also be an animal, a being in another part of the Universe, or a machine that has the property of sentience.) When John Smith considered the latter possibility he was making the Host-Soul duality that I have made. His Soul is his being aware of himself as Host [John Smith] but it can be separate from Host [John Smith] and, when Host [John Smith] dies, it is then, say, the Soul of Tom Green. At least at this stage of the argument we presume that his Soul somehow 'enters' Host [Tom Green] at the time Host [Tom Green] is in a sufficiently physically developed form to be sentient. Of course, if this were the case, Tom Green would have absolutely no awareness of his Soul having once been the Soul of John Smith. (There is no good reason to place any faith in claims that people in some way have memories of their previous existences or they can be hypnotically regressed to their 'past lives'.)

In accordance with the above we can identify different Souls and identify the Soul of John Smith as, say, Soul [A]. Soul [A] is also the Soul of Tom Green once Host [John Smith] has died.

But John Smith also considered the possibility that death means oblivion: never again would he have the experience of being sentient. If such were the case then there is no necessity for a Host-Soul duality. It would therefore be inappropriate to refer to the Soul associated with Host [John Smith] as Soul [A]. It would make more sense to talk about Soul [John Smith]. Soul [John Smith] is now a property – I would say an activity - of Host [John Smith] and, like any other of Host [John Smith]'s properties – thoughts, knowledge, memories, beliefs, etc. - ceases when Host [John Smith] dies. If this the case for all Souls, then it follows that no Soul existed prior to the existence of the Host with which it is associated.

When contemplating the possibility that Soul [John Smith] is uniquely associated with ('an integral part' of) Host [John Smith], John Smith might have asked himself the question 'Does this mean that if I hadn't been born I would I never have the experience of being a person or any kind of conscious entity?' It seems like the answer, according to the present way of thinking, has to be 'No'. It is as though each one of us has only one opportunity of being a conscious being and that is as the person we are.

(One answer might be that John Smith would have been born as someone else – say, Mary Jones. In other words, Soul [John Smith] would be Soul [Mary Jones] instead. But we are assuming that Soul and Host are uniquely associated. Also we would have to ask what would happen to Soul [Mary Jones]?)

So, John Smith might have then asked himself some of the questions listed in Chapter 1. Let's recall what they were:

'If I only get one chance to experience being a "me" does this mean that I would have lost that chance if the person I am now had never been born if, say,

my parents had never met?

my parents had decided to have no more children before I was conceived?

my parents had not engaged in the act of conception that created the person I am (or they had used some form of contraception)?

a different sperm had fertilised the egg during the act of consummation?

I had been aborted in my mother’s womb?'

(I acknowledge that the question 'If X had not occurred what would have happened to Y? is not as simple as it seems and one reply is that it is meaningless to ask this: X and Y occur in reality because that's the way the reality is. This point will be taken up later but should not affect the utility of the present discussion.)

When he posed the above questions, John Smith was implying a more general question, namely 'If Soul [John Smith] is uniquely integral to and dependent on Host [John Smith] what defines Host [John Smith] such that its Soul is indeed Soul [John Smith]?'

Well (ignoring artificial means of conception), every Host starts off when a single sperm from the father fertilises a single egg from the mother. The individual's unique genetic constitution is thus established and an environment is in place (the mother's womb) for the fertilised egg to develop over the course of around 9 months into a baby ready to be born and live in physical separation from its mother.

A simple answer, then, is that an individual's identity is determined by the combination of one unique sperm with one unique egg. Since up to the present time there must have existed trillions and trillions of sperm cells and billions and billions of egg cells, the possible number of unique individuals that could have existed is unimaginably huge (although most could not have been conceived as, disregarding modern IVF practices, for only a small fraction of sperm-egg pairings would their periods of viability overlap).

So, according to this theory, the answer to John Smith's question 'Would I have lived if a different sperm had fertilised the egg during the act of consummation?' is 'No'. That is Host [John Smith] would never have existed. And if Soul [John Smith] is uniquely integral to and dependent on Host [John Smith], Soul [John Smith] would never have existed either.

(It is possible to go down the road of assuming that Host and Soul are just defined by the egg, regardless of the fertilising sperm. I am not going to do this and, in any case, the outcome of the argument is the same as if a unique sperm-egg pairing is assumed to underlie the Host's identity. The reader may have also wondered about the implications of the fact that identical twins originate from the same sperm-egg combination. I will mention this again later.)

From this John Smith would probably consider that he was extraordinarily lucky to have been born at all! Recall the Meditation in Chapter 2, namely to think of all the different things that could have happened to stop you being born. Not only has the sperm that originally fertilised the egg to compete with millions of other sperms, but you have also to make it through those 9 months in the womb. What if your parents had never met? Think of all the decisions that each of them had to make that ensured they would meet and decide to form a relationship. Now apply this thinking to their parents. And to their parents and so on and on…..

If we are asserting that each person (each unique Host with its unique Soul) is the product of a unique sperm and a unique egg, then it seems to be a remarkable coincidence that that sperm and that egg were created in the first place.

One answer to all of this, one that was alluded to earlier, is to say that there is only one reality. It is therefore meaningless to ask, 'What would have happened to X (e.g. me) if Y had not happened (e.g. my grandparents had never met)' because X and Y are both part of reality and there is only one reality, which is how things are. Moreover, in order to be astonished at the seemingly high improbability of our existence we have to exist in the first place! All in all, arguments against a particular idea that simply proceed along the lines of 'What would have happened if X hadn't happened' are not very convincing.

Hence, on this line of thinking, we can simply say that there is no particular reason to assume a Host-Soul duality: what we have identified as the Soul is simply a function of the Host and ceases when the Host dies.

If instead of this we prefer the idea that the Soul, on the death of its Host 'enters' another Host (e.g. Tom Green on John Smith's death) then we are left with the question 'Why that Host (Tom Green)' and not, say, Fred Jones? We also get into enormous difficulties as we go back in time to do with the number of Souls and the number of Hosts; whether these numbers are compatible (they aren't unless some Hosts have 'new' Souls that have never been attached to a Host before); and so on.

It seems as though we are coming to the conclusion that there is no need for any Host-Soul duality, that the questions posed in Chapter 1 are answered by saying that we are the person we are and no explanation for this is required, and that before and after our existence there is mere oblivion. Asking the fundamental question 'Why was I born the person I am and not somebody else?' appears to be meaningless, since there would be absolutely no way of knowing, and absolutely no detectable difference if, say, I were born the Prince of Wales and the Prince of Wales were born as me.

So have we really now fully answered the questions? I do not think that we have. I believe that we still have a lot of explaining to do about conscious experience and self-awareness. I think that there are possible explanations that can provide answers to our questions even though the questions themselves may be based on naïve and fallacious ways of thinking. So, on with the journey!

Meditation

Imagine two healthy young girls, Anne and Mary, aged around 5 years, happily playing together. Are they the same person or two different people? There can only be one answer, yes or no, with no in-betweens and no ifs or buts. Obviously the answer is that they are two different people!

Now imagine a lady in her 80s, ill, frail and confined to a wheelchair. This is Anne, 80 years later. Sadly, Anne now has advanced dementia and has little awareness of who and where she is and who are the people round her (her children, grandchildren, etc.). She does not even appear able to recall the events of her life.

Is Anne who was playing with Mary all those years ago the same person as Anne in the wheelchair? Or are they two different people? Again there can only be one answer, yes or no, with no in-betweens and no ifs or buts. Obviously the answer is that they are the same person! And we would say categorically that old Anne is not the same person as young Mary!

But why? Physically, old and young Anne are completely different in the sense that there is no material part of old Anne that was also part of young Anne. In this respect old and young Anne are as different as young Anne and Mary and old Anne and young Mary. And as regards physical similarity, young Anne and Mary appear to have much more in common than young Anne and old Anne.

One answer could be that old Anne has the same DNA as young Anne (the same pattern but not the very same DNA molecules that were present in young Anne). But even without DNA evidence we would have absolutely no hesitation in declaring that old and young Anne are one and the same person. And what if Anne and Mary are identical twins and therefore have the same DNA?

The meditation is about this question. What does it mean to say that two things at different points in time are one and the same?

Identity

25.6.07

Throughout this discussion, the way I have conceived 'the Soul' is that a person's Soul is 'the same' throughout his or her life. This is indeed what is feels like to us, and this way of thinking helps simplify the discussion. But is it a meaningful assumption? How would anybody know if, say, the Soul of one person replaced another Soul in a particular Host? Would there be any noticeable change? Recall the meditation exercise in Chapter 1 where you were asked to imagine exchanging Souls with another person. (Please keep in mind exactly what I mean by Soul, otherwise a lot of this simply won't make sense.)

We also assume that a Host, say, a particular person, is the same Host over a period of time. The person whom we recognised as Queen Elizabeth II in the last Trooping of the Colour ceremony is the same person as the one whom we see in films of the 1953 Coronation and, all being well, will be the same person we see on our television sets at the State Opening of Parliament next year. But in what way is she the same person?

Let's consider the 'teleportation' scenario presented in Chapter 4. It is, of course, only hypothetical; there is no technology that allows us to achieve what is described and it is unlikely there ever will be. However, the outcome is what we intuitively believe would be the case were it to be possible. Why is this?

Firstly, a person recreated atom-for-atom from an existing individual would have memories, thoughts, and personality traits identical to that individual. As I have stressed, all of these are activities not entities. Also, he (or she) would genuinely feel and believe that he has always been that person; how could he experience anything else? In other words it would seem to him that he has the same Soul. Once again, 'the Soul' is not an entity but something the Host does – being aware of being that Host.

Secondly, and it must surely follow from the above, there is a rule that separate Hosts 'have' separate Souls. (I have put 'have' in inverted commas, to denote 'in a manner of speaking' since I have already emphasised that the Soul is an activity not an entity. Perhaps it is better to say 'separate Hosts do separate Souls'.)

Let's go back for a moment to the case of John Smith in the previous chapter and suppose that he had an identical twin, Mark Smith. John and Mark would develop from the same sperm and the same egg (and thus be genetically identical). But they would always have distinctly separate Souls not one Soul that is aware of the subjective experiences of the two Hosts. Intuitively we sense that the same would be true of the two Hosts in the teleportation scenario where, owing to a technical fault, the Host on the Moon still exists when the Host on the Earth sets off home. Each 'has a Soul' i.e. is aware of being, and only ever being, that person and does not experience being the other. But, we ask, which is the original Soul? If it is the Soul on the Moon, then on every previous occasion that the person has been teleported between the Moon and the Earth, he or she has acquired a new Soul, the old Soul having been destroyed at the moment of teleportation. Yet the person himself or herself has absolutely no way of detecting this and neither has anyone else.

I have stated that it is impossible to do the experiment. Yet the transformation of 'old' Hosts into 'new' Hosts is happening all the time! The molecules that comprise any Host are constantly dying and (though not always) being replaced; hence, in the case of humans, it has been estimated that there is an almost complete turnover of molecules after about 9 years (though some of the original molecules or atoms will be present in a different part of the Host). Of course the 'newly constructed' Host is not an exact replica of the 'old Host' 9 years ago. A Host is constantly changing due to aging, experience, injury, illness, and so on. But, despite the replacement of all the trillions of parts of which we are comprised, we remain the same person to ourselves and to others. We 'have' the same personal identity and we 'have' the same Soul.

Now in actual fact, neither this nor the business of 'which is the original Soul' in the teleportation scenario should cause us any problems because we accept that the mind is an activity – something the brain does - and not an entity. An exact replica of the nervous system of one human being, along with the exact replication of the rest of that individual (i.e. his or her body), will perform exactly the same things – think, remember, perceive, feel, etc. in a manner identical to the original. (Of course, as time goes on, the different experiences of the two individuals will alter their structures in different ways and they will then function differently, although unless something drastic happens to one or both, their activities will remain very similar.) Moreover it will 'have a Soul' that is the activity of that particular Host and only that Host.

This retention of identity despite a complete change of material composition is often called the 'grandfather's axe' effect: 'Fred has an axe that once belonged to his grandfather; 10 years ago Fred replaced the head of the axe and last year he replaced the handle. However, he still calls it 'grandfather's axe'.

More convincingly: for many years Leroy has had a vintage Triumph sports car that he christened 'Lucy' when he first acquired it. Over the years he has lovingly restored it, replacing each old part with a new one, but making sure that every replacement is of identical design to the original. Today not own part of it belonged to the car he bought. But it is still the same model and he still calls it 'Lucy'. (There is an example of greater antiquity, namely the ship of the ancient Greek Theseus which his followers completely restored over time.)

There are many examples of this in everyday life and here's one more. Last year Tim visited his old school, Newton Primary. The pupils have all changed, the teachers have too, and 3 years ago the entire building and its contents went up in flames and the school was rebuilt on the same site. It's still Tim's old school, Newton Primary. You could tell a similar story about the football club that Tim has supported all his life.

And what about a newspaper - say the Daily Mail? In what sense is the Daily Mail that I may read today the same as the Daily Mail that people read on one day back in, say, 1937? Even nowadays, when people want to criticise this newspaper they sometimes say, 'This is the same newspaper that supported the Nazis and Fascists before the War'. But does it make any sense to say this? No one who works on the newspaper today did so in 1937 and the newspaper is produced in a different place. It is even meaningful to ask in what way are yesterday's Daily Mail and today's Daily Mail 'the same newspaper'. (Is today's Sun newspaper in any sense of the word the same as the Daily Herald, a broadsheet whose owner's renamed it the Sun in tabloid format in 1964 and which was taken over by Murdoch News International in 1969, giving us a newspaper that is opposite in most important aspects from the old Daily Herald?)

Since antiquity, philosophers have also debated whether a river at the same place at two different times is the same river (hence, 'No man ever steps in the same river twice'). You can conjure up thousands of examples. Imagine standing on a shore and watching a big wave coming in. You take a photograph of it at 20 metres' distance and again at 10 metres' distance. Have you photographed the same wave? We would all agree you have indeed done so. But a wave is a rhythmical up-and-down movement of water. It's this up and down motion that moves, not the water itself. And this movement constantly alters in form and extent as it is propagated towards the shore. So, what is the same about what we call the wave that we photographed first and what we call a wave that we photographed next? Clearly they are not the same thing if by thing we mean a material object or a collection of objects.

So far, it seems that X and Y, two 'things' separated by a period of time, are the same because they are recognised as such by one or more observers. The criteria that determine how they are thus recognised are not easy to pin down: even though the preserved identity may seem obvious, the more you try to define why they are the same, the more elusive the reason seems. I'm not going to attempt to resolve this, since it is one of those fundamental philosophical questions that people, including some of the world's greatest geniuses, have grappled with for centuries. And I'm no genius! However, in the next chapter I will address a question that may have occurred to you already: what about solid objects? Surely a solid object like a table is the same object at different points in time?

Instead, consider again the meditation in the previous chapter about Anne and Mary. We are unequivocal in saying that old Anne and young Anne are the same person even though (or even if) they share not one atom in common. We can argue this by saying that being Anne is what both of them do and what no one else, or nothing else, has done, does or will do. (Recall from Chapter 4 the rule 'Our being is in our doing'.) But who is to say that young Anne and old Anne are both doing Anne and what does it really mean to say this?

Well, if we just mean they are both being Host [Anne] by virtue of what they are doing then we have the problem that they are hardly doing anything in common. You see, I cheated a bit by saying that old Anne suffers from advanced dementia and can't really remember who she is. She has lost her memories, her personality has changed, likewise her ways of thinking, and so on. Yet, we still consider that she is the same person as young Anne. But supposing that old Anne did have all her faculties, is there any sense that she and young Anne are both doing Anne (and therefore being Anne). It still seems that they are so different in what they are doing that they are not the same person at all.

One obvious argument for the identity of young Anne and old Anne runs as follows. Think of Anne and Mary playing together as children and then old Anne with her infirmities. Suppose something terrible befalls young Anne while she is playing with Mary, say she falls in a river and drowns. Then, there would be no old Anne. Therefore young Anne and old Anne are the same person, even though they are materially different. Indeed we could say the same about young Anne and Anne as a baby in her mother's womb.

Let's think of it in a slightly different way and talk about you. In your childhood you think about what you will do and what you will experience when you are older. You know that whatever happens it will be you who is experiencing it, not somebody else, even though the physical you - you [Host] - will be different. More precisely in our terminology, it will be you [Soul] that will be the same. This is true for any point in the future. For example, I am now thinking about a difficult task that I shall have to undertake 2 week's from now. I feel somewhat nervous about this; e.g. I have 'butterflies' and the expectation that I will not be feeling so good when I am undertaking this task. I know it will be me who will be experiencing this when the time comes.

The same applies of course when we recall events that have already happened to us. When I remember my first day at school, even though me [Host] has changed completely (in the sense that there is no bit of me then that exists as part of me now) there is no doubt in my mind that it was me (me [Soul]) that was experiencing this and nobody else. If between then and now I had died, that memory would have died with me. Nobody else would be remembering it in the way I remember it as something I was doing and as something that was happening to me.

So that seems to settle it. One Host 'does' one Soul uniquely and even though the Host physically changes over time it still 'does' the same unique Soul and no other Host 'does' that Soul. Destroy the Host and you destroy the Soul.

This may be true in practice, but again recall the thought experiment of Chapter 4, involving the hypothetical procedure of teleportation. By this means, a Host (say Host [John Smith]) is scanned and the exact co-ordinates of every atom of that Host is plotted on a computer. Then the Host is replicated in material form. We have seen that the identity of the Soul is not dependent on the material identity of the Host. So if this procedure were possible then it seems that the reconstituted Host would 'do' the same Soul. And that is what the reconstituted Host [John Smith] would experience: 'I am John Smith, I have always been John Smith, I will always be John Smith' he will insist. Yet if the original Host [John Smith] is not obliterated, it would experience and insist exactly the same.

And here's another consideration. Imagine you are going to be teleported to the Moon next week. Are you looking forward to this? Are you excited? Do you imagine all the things YOU will be doing when YOU get there and all the things that will be happening to YOU. Do you see my point? Will it really be YOU? Will it be Soul [you]? Well, once the teleportation has been completed no doubt the teleported you will be telling us how relieved he or she is to still be that same person who was so excited about being teleported to the Moon but also so anxious that he or she would in effect die and be replaced by another person – i.e. another Soul.

Moreover, if you are so anxious that your Soul will not be reconstituted in the process, why aren't you also anxious right now about the 'slow motion teleportation effect' whereby over the next 9 years you will be entirely physically reconstituted? When you imagine what you will be doing in 9 years' time, you don't ask yourself if that person will really be YOU, you 'with the same Soul' as you 'have' now.

So also this seems to upset our earlier argument that the test of whether young Anne and old Anne are the same person is that if young Anne were to die, old Anne, with the same Soul as young Anne, would never exist. If Host [Anne] dies and we have an exact replica of her encoded on a computer, and if we are able to materially re-construct that replica, then we would have a Host that appears to 'do' Soul [Anne] and, as we have seen, it does not matter that this Host is entirely constructed from different atoms that made up original Host [Anne].

Meditation

Well, things may seem to be more confused than ever! In the next chapter I shall attempt to find a way of clearing up this confusion and I shall do this by thinking in greater depth about something that has been gradually insinuating itself into this exploration of the Soul and that will increasingly become a major factor. This is time. When we have been thinking about why we consider X and Y to be the same, we have meant X and Y at different points in time. So it's important to think more about what time is and in particular to question some assumptions that we make about time.

By way of preparation, it is worth meditating about what we mean by 'now'. All our conscious experiences appear to 'take place' in an instant of time that we call 'now'. We cannot experience the future until it becomes 'now' and, seemingly in no time at all, that experience becomes a 'then'. To be sure, we can use our imagination in the present to experience something of a future 'now', and use our memory likewise for a past 'now', but those actual experiences that we are endeavouring to create are still in the future or in the past.

So all that is required for the moment is to meditate on the question 'What is "now"'?

About Time

5.8.07

(Please note that there are two amendments to this chapter that were made on 3.8.08. They are both in the 'Meditation' section at the end of the chapter.)

It is my hope that in the chapters thus far, I have set the scene for addressing the questions that I raised in Chapter 1. I have not given any final answers to these questions but I have stated what I believe (and what science tells us) are definitely not the correct answers.

I have opted for the moment for a form of dualism by distinguishing 'the Host' and 'the Soul'. I have insisted that a person's identity is a property of the Host – something the Host does – and dies with it. A Soul - i.e. one's awareness of being (and therefore not really 'a thing', but let's talk about it as such for the moment) - is always tied to a Host, but I have questioned whether the Soul is entirely a property of one unique Host and therefore dies with it or whether that same Soul can be a property of Hosts-that-have-been and Hosts-that-are-yet-to-be. It seems that either way, questions are raised that do not have very satisfactory answers.

So how can we take our quest further? One way forward is to give some thought to our concept of time.

Understanding what time is is possibly the most important undertaking of modern theoretical scientists. I am certainly not going to take on the task of presenting a theory of time, since I am completely lacking in the knowledge and ability to do so. Neither am I going to make any major assumptions about time: far from it. In fact I am going to suggest that we drop some assumptions that we always make about time in our daily life. (It is probably worth saying that many scientists are also quite happy to do this).

Let us first consider the moment of the creation of the universe, what most scientists identify as the 'Big Bang'. Although there is much debate about this, it is helpful (though not essential) for present purposes to suppose that time, as well as space, was created at the moment of the Big Bang. Ever since that moment, the universe has been changing and expanding and we assume that it does so with reference to something we call 'time'. Time is like an invisible scale that enables us (hypothetically at any rate) to say that any particular event in the universe occurs a certain number of seconds (e.g. billions of billions of seconds) after the creation of time at the Big Bang.

We can also say that what we mean by existence is defined by a moment in time that we call 'now'. Everything that is occurring at the point in time we call now 'exists'. Before now, things existed but they no longer exist. After now, things still do not exist: they have yet to exist. They will exist only at the moment that time becomes now. Existence is now.

At this juncture, you may be confused by the word 'exist' because we speak of things existing over time not just for a particular moment in time. For example, the desk at which I am sitting existed yesterday and last year (and 10 years ago and so on) and, I hope, it will continue to exist for some years to come. This brings us back to matters I discussed in the last chapter when I asked in what way something such as a wave in the sea can be said to be the same wave at different points in time. I raised the question whether the arguments against its being so could be applied to solid objects – for example my desk. There are two arguments that I can think of for saying that my desk is not the same object over time.

The first argument is of passing interest only but I'll mention it. If each of the trillions and trillions of particles that make up my desk was actually a type of wave (i.e. activity) rather than 'an object' then you could say that my whole desk is not the same object at different points in time (just as a wave in the sea is not).

The second argument, more relevant here, is that the entire universe is expanding all the time. It is not just that the galaxies are moving apart: the whole fabric of space has been expanding relentlessly since the universe was created. Hence, just as granddad's axe, Theseus' ship, a human being, etc. are different objects at different points in time (see the last chapter), so we could argue the same for any solid object, such as my desk.

So, back to our discussion about now and existence. An analogy for what I have been describing (though one we should be careful not to take too far) may be that of someone watching an old-fashioned reel-to reel film. The film travels past the aperture at uniform speed, the image on each frame being projected onto the screen in succession. In this way, in the mind of the observer, each frame represented on the screen 'exists' at a 'now' point in time, before and after which it does not exist.

We think of the entire universe in this way (though modern scientists may not do so). That is, a now moment is when the universe exists and, because it is continuously expanding, it exists now in a certain unique way; it was not the same before now and it will not be the same again after now. (Except that some scientists predict that the universe will eventually reverse its expansion. We have no need to worry about this here.)

We tend also to think that this would still be the way the universe is if there weren't people in it to think that this is how it is (just as we think that a tree that falls down in a forest still makes a sound even if no living thing is around to hear it).

But is there any good reason why we should think of the universe as existing in this timely way? Not really. For one thing, we can ask what it is that defines the now that signifies existence as opposed to non-existence (before and after now) if it is not a sentient being.

In order to take my argument further, I shall now have to rely on the idea of a 'discrete conscious event' (or just 'conscious event') that is experienced by a Host and occurs at a 'point in time'. (Our experience is that consciousness is continuous, like a stream: a stream does not appear to flow in the manner of a series of jumps from one position to the next. More realistically, it is quite possible that a 'conscious event' occurs over a period of time of the order of 1-2 seconds, but let's call this a 'point in time'. I acknowledge that the idea of a 'conscious event' may be simplistic but I believe it still serves its purpose.)

I am going to make a further distinction and talk about the Universe of Physical Events (or sometimes just the physical universe) and the Universe of Conscious Events. How I use this distinction will become apparent as I go along.

Consider a conscious event as experienced by a particular Host. Let that Host be you, the reader. The moment in time that you are experiencing this event is, for you, defined as now.

You assume that your now is the same as the now of the person you are with and every other terrestrial Host (or human being on the planet). And this is true. But it is only true with reference to the Universe of Physical Events.

In the Universe of Physical Events you are constrained to say, for example, 'At the same time that I am engaging in the activity related to consciously experiencing reading these words, my neighbour is engaged in the activity related to consciously experiencing some music on her radio. (To make the argument it is necessary to use these rather cumbersome expressions. At this juncture it may be apposite to note, as an aside, that according to modern science it is not possible to say with precision that two events occur ‘at the same time’. This is because they inevitably occur at different spatial locations in a universe that is always in motion. However this should not concern us unduly)

However, you are not constrained to say that your conscious 'now' experience is occurring at the same time as your neighbour's conscious 'now' experience. (I shall, in fact, at a later stage have reason to contradict this statement, but to develop my argument I shall insist on this at present. It is, incidentally, common when discussing this matter to refer to the English essayist Charles Lamb who, in 1817, wrote, 'My now is not your now'.) But neither does it make any sense to say that your neighbour's 'now' experience occurred before your 'now' experience or will be experienced after it.

In other words, in the Universe of Conscious Events it makes no sense to order discrete conscious events in time in the way we that we normally understand time. Let us digest the more immediate implications of this.

In the Universe of Physical Events, you are constrained to accept, for example, that 'At the time that I am switching the kettle on for a drink, Julius Caesar is not being assassinated, as Julius Caesar's assassination occurred over 2000 years before my switching the kettle on'.

In the Universe of Physical Events you are also constrained to say, 'At the same time as the brain activity associated my having a 'now' experience (e.g. being conscious of my putting the kettle on for a drink), Julius Caesar cannot be engaged in the brain activity associated with his having a 'now' experience, because he died over 2000 years before my 'now' activity.

Likewise In the Universe of Physical Events you are constrained to say, 'At the same time that Julius Caesar was engaging in the brain activity associated with consciously experiencing his being knifed by an assassin, the assassin was engaging in the brain activity associated with consciously experiencing his knifing Julius Caesar'.

However, you are not constrained to say, for example, 'Because I am having a 'now' experience, Julius Caesar (or any other deceased person) cannot also be having a 'now' experience because he is dead. Nothing entitles us to order conscious experiences along a time dimension in this way with reference only to each other.

Now, surprisingly, we can say exactly the same for Hosts that have yet to materialise (e.g. human beings who have yet to be born) however far ahead in the future we are prepared to think. That is, we are not able to say that because I am having a 'now' experience, John Smith cannot also be having a 'now' experience, because he is not due to be born for another 10 years, 100 years, or indeed any number of years over the time scale that Hosts are viable in the physical universe. It makes no sense to say this.

Even more surprising is the conclusion that in the Universe of Conscious Events there is no temporal ordering (as we understand it) of such events for any single Host. That is, according to the way of thinking presented here, we can abandon the assumption that the 'now' experience that I am currently having is occurring after the 'now' experience that I was having at exactly 12 o'clock midday on September 30th 1972 and before the 'now' experience that I shall have at exactly 2.30 p.m. next Thursday. Let's examine this rather startling idea further.

In the Universe of Physical Events, each Host experiences consciousness as a continuous flow along the time dimension in one direction, i.e. away from the moment of creation of the physical universe. We naturally assume that the physical activities related to our conscious experiences of 10 years ago, 1 year ago, 1 month, 1 week, 1 day, 1 hour, 1 minute, 1 second ago, etc. are 'in the past' and no longer exist. In each case the activity has ceased. Moreover, physical activity associated with a conscious experience of 1 second ago is as much in the past and extinct as physical activity associated with a conscious experience of 10 years ago. We can argue likewise for physical activity associated with a conscious experience in the future.

(In fact, we could, if we wished, challenge these assumptions but it is not necessary to do this here.) But in the Universe of Conscious Events there is no reason why we should assume that all conscious events are not 'in existence' in the same way as the conscious event that is your experience of 'now'. (So, from this point of view and going back to what was said earlier, you may indeed be entitled to say that your conscious 'now' experience is occurring at the same time as your neighbour's conscious 'now' experience.)

In the Universe of Conscious Events all discrete conscious experiences exist simultaneously. They are all 'now'.

Let's think of an analogy that may assist our understanding of these ideas. (Remember that it is only an analogy and is therefore limited in its explanatory value.) Consider again an old-fashioned reel-to-reel film – say of a plane taking off at an airport. The reel of film itself consists of hundreds of frames in strict temporal sequence. When we watch the film each frame is presented in that order: if the projector is functioning normally, the film can't be presented in any other order (ignoring the fact that it can be played backwards). And while the film is running through the projector, the event that is now is the image depicted by the frame that is in the aperture and being projected onto the screen. Events associated with earlier frames were 'now' events in the past, and events associated with later frames will be 'now' events in the future.

However, the actual frames themselves exist in time together. When the film is in its canister, when we take it out and hold it in our hand, when we install it in the projector, when the projector is not set up properly and the film unravels and ends up on the floor, or whatever, there is no ordering of the frames in time. They exist simultaneously. We can view any frame on its own as a now if we put the film in the projector so that frame is being projected as a still shot. Although it would be rather tedious, we could manually slot in a series of individual frames at random and view each one (or more simply just hold each one up to the light). Before we do this we could chop the film up into separate frames, jumble them all up and pick and view individual ones at random. The point is that, just as I have said that that there is no ordering in time of now experiences, there is no ordering in time of the frames. But we have not done away with time. We must remember that the content of any single frame that we pick up and view is determined by all of the frames that depict events previous to that frame: it contains the history of those frames, just as each stage of the actual event that was filmed is determined by what happened before.

We can think of an individual film as analogous in some ways to a unique Host. So, let's imagine bringing all the films that exist at the present time into one room. Now we have a Universe of Frames! Again, we can consider each one of the millions of frames to be analogous to a discrete conscious event (a now experience) in the life of one particular Host. But they are all are present at the same time. We can view any frame (analogous to a discrete conscious event) at random, and its contents will be determined by the events that occurred before as depicted by other frames in the same film (analogous to the same Host).

I am suggesting that we can think of the Universe of Conscious Events in a similar (but not identical) way to the Universe of Frames: a kind of Virtual Universe.

I say 'think of it in this way' because I am not saying 'This is how it actually is'. We can only think about our world, understand it and explain it, within the constraints of our own mental apparatus. The way we habitually think about it is usually the way that best suits our everyday purposes. But when we are trying to understand and explain something as complex and unfathomable as consciousness it may be better to depart from these everyday ways of thinking and apply more unusual ideas and assumptions (or abandon common assumptions). Nevertheless, this different way of understanding still has to be within the capabilities of our mental apparatus. For example, we have to rely on analogies from everyday experience which are themselves limited in their explanatory value.

Hence what I am proposing is possibly a more useful approximation to what I believe is happening in reality, but I cannot claim that this is what is actually happening. And obviously I have still a lot more explaining to do!

Meditation

The Universe of Conscious Events is every discrete conscious event – every now experience – that has occurred since the creation of the physical universe and that will occur until the universe has evolved beyond the stage where consciousness is no longer viable. Each discrete conscious event is separate from every other in a way similar to every single frame of every film that exists.(amended 3.8.08)

This is a very different way of thinking about the world, life and conscious experience and it is useful to meditate on what I have suggested in order to understand the full implications, to be aware of potential difficulties, and to think how the world might be structured to allow for what is being proposed. You may find the mental picture of the film/frame –conscious event/Host analogy useful for your meditation.

Author’s note, 3.8.08: Since writing further chapters of ‘A Theory of the Soul’ it has become clear to me that some of the ideas in this chapter need amendment or may otherwise be contradicted by the way I develop them in the chapters to follow. However, there is only one point I wish to make now, and that is to stress that in thinking of all discrete conscious events as existing in time together, we have not dispensed with the time dimension. The rules governing the relationships between discrete conscious events, which according to our everyday understanding of time we describe in terms such as ‘influence’ or ‘causality’, must be strictly preserved. For example a particular conscious experience that I have today cannot ‘influence’ any conscious experiences that I had yesterday but can ‘influence’ those that I have tomorrow.

09.06.08

Time and Existence

In the last chapter I made use of the idea of a discrete conscious event associated with a particular Host and I made a distinction between the Universe of Conscious Events (for all Hosts) and the Universe of Physical Events or, put more simply, the Physical Universe. (In fact, the Universe of Conscious Events is a minute part of the Physical Universe.) I have made this distinction so that I can put forward my ideas on the nature of consciousness and the Soul, without theorising more broadly about the nature of the Universe, since I have insufficient expertise concerning the latter. However it may be that the ideas I suggest about the 'Universe of Conscious Events' apply to the Physical Universe in general and it may be that they must apply, if those ideas are valid.

To recap further, I have pointed out that normally one thinks of conscious events as being ordered in time and that only the conscious event that we experience now exists: previous conscious experiences no longer exist and future ones have yet to exist. I have suggested that this way of thinking is unnecessary and we can abandon it and consider that all discrete conscious events (within and across Hosts) can be thought of as being in existence together. They occur at the same moment.

I shall keep reminding you that I am not suggesting that in the Universe of Conscious Events there is no dimension of time. Clearly there are lawful relationships between events that are ordered along the time dimension. For example, things that have happened to me in the past influenced my conscious experiences then; they do so now and they will do so later. But things that I experience in the future cannot influence my conscious experience now or at any time until those events actually happen. These rules must be preserved, even when we detach our understanding of existence from the normal way we think of the time dimension.

In the last chapter I used the analogy of a reel of film, say of an aircraft taking off. I identified the film as the Host and each frame as a ‘conscious event’. The content of each frame is lawfully determined by all the frames that precede it in the film but not by any that succeed it. So there is definitely such a thing as time. But the frames all exist together in time so it is not time as we consciously experience it.

In this chapter I want to look at another way of envisaging the Universe of Conscious Events in a way that separates existence and time. This is less metaphorical than the above and arises out of a way of thinking about the entire Physical Universe and time. In doing so I shall contradict some distinctions I made in the last chapter between physical events and conscious events in relation to time, but in the end it is only the Universe of Conscious Events that I am interested in. I am certainly not in any position to construct any theories of the Physical Universe.

Space and time in the Physical Universe

The Physical Universe is normally conceived of as having 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time. Any event in the Physical Universe occurs at a location in space that is defined by the 3 spatial dimensions and at a location in time along 1 time dimension. Let's refer to this as the 3+1 D universe.

For example, imagine that the 'universe' is an empty cardboard box. Imagine now that we place a cat in the box. We may then observe that precisely x seconds after setting the cat down in the box, a certain point on the tip of its left ear occupies a position in the box that can be described in terms of how far it is from (i) the front of the box, (ii) the bottom of the box, and (iii) the left side of the box.

What does a universe with no spatial dimensions look like? It is an infinitesimally small point, and for convenience let us represent this point as a dot on a piece of paper. It is so small that it has no up-down, left-right or in-out within it. In other words, it has no spatial dimensions. Can it have a time dimension? I don't think so, but people better qualified than I can answer this question.

Now imagine taking this point and stretching it along one direction, say, from left to right. When we stop, we see that we have created what we can construe as a 1- dimensional object – a straight line. Of course, in the 3+1 D universe in which we are performing this demonstration, just as the dot must be 3-dimensional in space, so must the line. However, let us consider the line to have only 1 dimension and think of it as part of a much longer line, a '1-dimensional universe' (which, in the way we are imagining it, doesn't have to be a straight line; for example it could curve and eventually join up with itself, say as a circle.) Let the line we have drawn on the paper extend from A on the left-hand side to Z on the right-hand side.

Any object in such a universe occupies only 1 dimension of space. Its size is specified by only 1 dimension (e.g. 2 units in length). Its position in the universe can be defined by one number (e.g. if it is on the line we have drawn we may say 'its centre is 2 units from A, the left hand end of the line'), likewise its position relative to another object in the same universe (e.g. 'its centre is [plus or minus] 2 units' away from the centre of the other object). And it can only move along 1 dimension.

Now imagine taking both ends of the line, A and Z, and stretching the line at right angles to itself, say down the page, so it leaves a trace as it travels, rather like pulling down the blind of a window.

When we stop, we see that we now have now created what we can theoretically construe as a 2-dimensional plane. Imagine this plane to be part of an infinite 2-dimensional universe. Any object in such a universe occupies 2 dimensions of space. Its size is specified by 2 dimensions (e.g. a rectangle may be 2 units x 4 units in area). Its position in the universe may also be defined by 2 numbers (e.g. its centre is 2 units from the left hand side and 3 units from the bottom side in the plane we have constructed), likewise its position relative to another object in the same universe. It can only move with respect to 2 dimensions.

How do we create a 3-dimensional universe? We stretch the 2-dimensional universe at right angles to itself, say by pulling it towards us. Once more, as it moves, it leaves a trace and when we stop we have created an object the shape of a box or fish tank - a 3-dimensional object that we can now think of as part of a much larger 3-dimensional universe in which the size, position and movement of any object may be defined by reference to 3 dimensions.

Now let's think about the dimension of time. To do this, let's go back to the universe with 1 spatial dimensional and consider the line from A to Z. Consider a small object O (1-dimensional of course) 1 unit long, moving at 1 unit per second along the line, starting with its centre at a point B, 1 unit to the right of A, and moving towards Z. The centre of O moves through a series of points on the line marked, C, D, E and so on. Let's separate each point by 1 unit. When we say, for example, 'O is at D' we mean 'the centre of the object is located at D'.

So, starting with O at B, after 1 second O is at C, after 2 seconds it is at D, after 3 seconds it is at E, and so on.

When the centre of the object is at one of the points (B C, D, etc.), let's refer to this as 'an event', and label it B, C, D, etc. So we can say the events C, D, E etc. occur at moments defined as 1, 2, 3 etc seconds after event B, the starting point of O's movement.

Now, there is another way of expressing the above statement that does away with any reference to time as we usually conceive it and merely refers to space. We can say that at a distance of 1 unit from B (the point of O's departure) event C occurs; at a distance of 2 units from B, event D occurs; at a distance of 5 units from B, event G occurs; and so on.

(There is a very simple analogy to this. Imagine you are on a train journey and at some point you decide to go to the buffet bar. You might say, 'Ten minutes after the train's departure I went to the buffet bar'. But instead you could say, 'Six miles after the train's departure…..' or even, 'As the train was passing through Dunton Station….'. In the first case you define the occurrence of the event with respect to the time dimension whereas in the second and third cases you define the same event by reference to space.)

We can thus represent the movement of O entirely spatially, but remember that when we do so, we are not simply referring to some 'trace' left by O's movement in 1- dimensional space (as if, say, we were drawing a line with a pencil from B to G). Each position of O on the line occurs at a different time.

But, when we express the events B, C, D, etc. spatially in this way, does it not mean that we have done away with time entirely? Not at all. There are lawful relationships between these events associated with their relative positions in time that must be preserved when we represent them entirely spatially.

For example, we can state that there is a relationship between events C, D and E such that 'If D then C' and 'If C and E then D' but there is no rule 'If C then D' because the movement of O may have ceased at some point between C and D.

(Note that we could, as is often done, represent time spatially by a perpendicular line at A and chart the movement of O in space and time this way (e.g. when O is 5 units from A along the horizontal axis it is 5 units away from A up the vertical axis). However, this is too schematic a representation to be of use here.)

Now lets apply the same idea to a universe of 2 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension. Imagine you have a blank sheet of paper and you are pressing a thick felt- tipped pen on the paper at a point A somewhere on the left hand side. But let's suppose that the pen is out of ink! It is therefore not making a mark on the paper. Now imagine moving the pen at a constant speed in a direction directly to the right, parallel to the lower edge of the paper (or 'the horizontal dimension). After 4 seconds change direction by 90 degrees and continue at the same speed in a straight vertical line down the paper for ½ second. Then make a turn of 150 degrees anticlockwise so the pen is now travelling at the same speed up the paper at an angle 30 degrees to the vertical. After 2 seconds change direction and once again move the pen in a horizontal direction towards the right, again at a constant speed, for 3 seconds. Imagine carrying on in this manner until you want to stop. For simplicity's sake let's avoid going 'backwards' (i.e. towards the left side of the paper). When you have finished, say at point J, you still have a blank piece of paper (remember – no ink).

Just as we did in the case of the 1-dimensional object moving in a 1- dimensional universe, can we represent, purely spatially, the history of the point of the pen (let's call it P) moving through 2-dimensional space from A to J and through the 1 dimension of time? Yes. It is simply the thick zigzagging line that P would have made on the paper had it contained ink. As before we can identify a number of points on that line as events (A, the beginning of P's movement, B, C, D, E etc, each defined as a particular number of units of time from A). We see that we have represented in static form the movement of P entirely spatially by the line, with no reference to time. (Note again that we are not equating this with the line itself as a 2-dimensional object existing along the time dimension.)

As with the previous example, we have not eliminated time by representing it spatially. The relationship between the events that exist along the line that we have devised must adhere strictly to relationships that are allowed and disallowed along the time dimension. The line must preserve these rules. We can actually make up some rules about time that can be represented on the line (e.g. if D and F then not E; or if H then either I or J, etc) and can even include probabilities (e.g. if B and D then the p(G) = ½).

We can now apply the same reasoning in the case of a universe with 3 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension – our 3+1 D universe – and 3-dimensional objects that move in it. Of course, even just considering the motion of one object is more complicated then in universes with 1 or 2 spatial dimensions, and very difficult to envisage. It becomes even more complex when we envisage the movement of several objects. Again the representation must preserve the rules involving time, even though we are representing time spatially. As was stated earlier, event E, say, can be influenced by events B, C and D that have occurred before E in time but not events X, Y and Z that occur after it. There are also rules about events according to their separation by distance, because nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (or any electromagnetic waves). For example, an event that occurs on the Sun cannot affect what I am doing until 8 minutes after that event has occurred.

(We might also refer here to rules about the collective movement of objects over time and the tendency for the objects to become more randomly distributed. For example if we place a drop of red dye in a beaker of water, the molecules of the dye will gradually be dispersed at random throughout the water and we will be left with a pink liquid. Although theoretically possible, there will never come a time when the molecules gather together again as a single red drop in a beaker of colourless water.)

Now let us remember one crucial thing about our Physical Universe. Since the moment of the Big Bang, it has always been expanding. This means that any event does not merely take place at a unique moment in time (say, a trillion trillion seconds after the Big Bang) that has not occurred before or since. Any event also occurs at a unique spatial location.

To understand this, imagine some historical figure who was assassinated and the very spot where this took place is marked by some form of memorial. Let’s take Thomas à Becket who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Now, we cannot go back in time to the very moment when Becket was struck down by his assassins but we can revisit the very place where this happened. Or can we?

Well, first of all, at the time of the assassination the earth was spinning on its axis. It was also revolving around the Sun, and the Sun and its solar system, including the Earth, were hurtling through space. So by these facts alone it’s not possible for us to go back to the very spot in the Universe where the assassination took place. But, according to our everyday notion of time, that very spot no longer exists anyway – neither did it exist before the assassination. This is because at the occurrence of that event, the Universe was expanding, just as it had always been doing before and has continued to do ever since.

So this event, and all events in the Physical Universe occur at a unique spatial location in the history of the Universe. The information that we can give about the time that the event occurred (in relation to the beginning of the Universe) is redundant because every event that occurs can be uniquely defined spatially and when thus defined we have also defined when it occurred in time.

It is thus theoretically possible to conceive of the Physical Universe as a fixed object in which all events since its inception to its demise (or in fact to any moment in its history) exist together.

In reality this is very difficult to do, but to assist us we can drop down 1 dimension to a universe of 2 spatial dimensions. Imagine a flaccid balloon. Let’s think of it as a 2-dimensional object – the surface of the balloon is a 2-dimensional universe. (We might even think of it in the first instance as non-dimensional, as was the Universe at the moment of the Big Bang, but it’s not necessary to do this). We start blowing up the balloon at a constant rate. Now at any time we can represent the history of the balloon, as a 2-dimensional expanding universe, as roughly a spherical shaped ‘solid’ object. Any point anywhere in that ‘object’ or on its surface is unique and is ‘an event’ in the history of the Universe that is the balloon.

Looking at the balloon in this way as a constantly expanding 2- dimensional ‘universe’, we have now done away with the everyday idea of existence as being ‘at this moment in time’ and not in time past or in future time. All the events exist together as points on that solid object.

Well, just as above for the 2+1 D universe that is the surface of a balloon, we can think of the history of every single event in our 3+1 D Universe as being spatially represented and existing together as points, although it is much harder to conceive of this than in the previous example. (Please note that I am not using the term ‘point’ in the infinitesimal sense: it is still 3-dimensional.)

One analogy that may help here is that of a time-lapse photograph of moving objects (though bear in mind a photograph is only a 2-dimensional representation of 3 dimensional space). A common one is a photograph of traffic moving along a busy road at night. The yellow headlights and the red rear lights appear as lines rather than small, well defined areas of light. Each point on a particular line is associated with a particular moment in time and we can see all the points ‘at the same time’. Another example is a time -lapse photograph of stars, which again appear as silver lines owing to the Earth’s rotation.

I want to stress that what I am describing is a way of thinking about the Universe rather than a statement about how the Universe is in reality. If this sounds like ‘a cop-out’ remember what I said in the previous chapter, namely that we can only think about our world, understand it and explain it, within the constraints of our own mental apparatus and this usually means through the medium of language, pictures and reference to (or analogies with) what we already know. As such, our internal model of the world is not the same as the world itself. But some models provide a more accurate description and representation – a more appropriate story even – than others. This is what scientific theories strive to do.

Reflections and Meditation

In this chapter, I have been trying to say something that is probably quite simple and obvious, but for some reason I have found it difficult to express my ideas succinctly and clearly. I apologise if you have found this so. Perhaps you are able to think of better ways. The important thing is that you are now imagining the entire history of the Universe, not in terms of the usual way we think about time, in which it only exists in the present but as a completely spatial entity in which every event in that history exists together.

In fact it is very difficult to picture the Universe in this way – I certainly can’t. It is easier to picture a 2+1 D or a 1+1 D universe like this. But this is not really a problem so long as you get the idea.

OK, so what? Is there anything particularly profound that emerges from this exercise?

Well I think there is. But firstly, once again I stress that we have not eliminated time. Time is still embodied in the rules that govern the relationships between all the different events that we identify as ‘points’ in our spatial representation of the history of the Universe, as discussed earlier.

But we have eliminated something of enormous significance to the way that we normally think about our world. We have eliminated existence as our conscious minds understand it. That is, we have eliminated the idea that existence is NOW and that what happened before NOW has ceased to exist and what is to happen after NOW does not yet exist. Past, present and future exist together.

It takes a while to get accustomed to thinking of the Universe like this and to understand all the implications of it. For the time being the Meditation is just to keep imaging the Physical Universe in the way that I have described it here and to consider the implications of such a Universe. Later on I will not press the point that this is how we should think of the Physical Universe, as I am not here developing a Theory of the Universe – I have no competence to do so. I am, however, developing a Theory of the Soul. I shall therefore insist that this is at least the way to conceive of that minute part of the Physical Universe that I refer to as the Universe of Conscious Events.

03.08.08

More on The Universe of Conscious Events

And so, in accordance with the last chapter, let us now imagine that we are looking at the Universe not as it exists at a particular ‘moment in time’ but as it exists from the point of its creation all the way through to the point of its demise, if there is a demise. Thus we see it in space and time but entirely spatially – in space-time.

In reality we cannot do this with our limited intellect but, with the help of analogies with things that our minds are capable of understanding - a train journey, a film of an aeroplane taking off, stars in a time-lapse photograph, etc. - we can have some idea of what we are being required to do.

Hence, in space-time we see every single event that makes up our 3+1D Universe over its entire history. There is no unique ‘now’; no ‘no longer’ or ‘yet to be’; no absolute ‘past’, ‘present’ or ‘future’. Everything – every single event – is now. (In the same way, perhaps, that there is no absolute here: here can be anywhere, now can be anytime.)

But let us not concern ourselves too much with the entire Physical Universe. We are more interested in what I have described as the Universe of Conscious Events. How can we imagine the Universe of Conscious Events in space-time? One way is to think of billions of tiny (i.e. indescribably small) strands in the space-time Physical Universe, each with a beginning and an end. (Think of the image of a star on a time-lapse photograph.)

Each strand represents the identity and history of a unique Host, such as an individual human being on the planet Earth, from the moment it is capable of conscious experience to the moment it is no longer so – i.e. it dies. (A Host, remember, is a minute bit of the Universe where matter is of such complexity that is has the property of being aware of the world, being aware of itself being aware of the world, being aware of being aware of itself……etc.)

In the space-time Universe of Conscious Events we can imagine each little point on this strand as a discrete conscious event. Each can be said to be ‘a conscious experience that the Host has (we should really say ‘does’) in its life and on the strand are all these discrete conscious events that the Host has during its life. They all exist together. Moreover they exist together with all other discrete conscious events of every Host in the Universe.

It’s as well to pause for a moment and really think about this.

First, consider a discrete conscious event you had in the recent past. For me, I shall choose the conscious experience associated with the moment I finished a short story by Alan Bennett that I have been reading; this happened at around 11.00 p.m. 6 days ago.

Next, consider a discrete conscious event you had in the remote past. For me I shall choose my first day at school and the experience of being shown by my teacher the peg on which I had to hang my coat every day – it had a picture of a little mouse over it.

Next, choose a discrete conscious event you will have at some time in the future. You don’t need to be too specific about this, since you don’t know for sure what the future holds. Perhaps you can choose waking up on some future birthday and thinking how old you are.

Next, choose two discrete conscious events that two people experienced in the past. For no particular reasons I am going to choose Neil Armstrong’s experience of putting his foot on the surface of the Moon for the first time on the 21st of July 1969 and Horatio Nelson’s experience of saying his final words before his death at Trafalgar on 21st of October 1805.

Finally consider your NOW experience – the discrete conscious event you are having at this moment. (Yes, I know. As soon as you think about it it’s in the past; but we can cope with this little difficulty.) For me it is typing words on my laptop in the lounge of my house at a certain time on Friday 11th of July 2008.

We are asserting that all of these conscious events exist together. In order to grasp this think spatially – i.e. in space-time. For example, your NOW experience can be your thinking about one of your two past experiences. As you look back on them imagine that they are like landmarks on a journey you are making. Just as, say, you may look back on a building you have passed or a mountain you have left behind in the distance, they have not ceased to exist; they are still there. So for me, the conscious experience of being shown by my teacher where to hang my coat on my first day at school is still ‘happening’. Likewise, Neal Armstrong’s conscious experience of putting his foot on the Moon’s surface and Horatio Nelson’s conscious experience of uttering his final words at Trafalgar can be said to still be happening. (We might want to argue that the actual physical events themselves are still happening, but I am going to stick now just with the Universe of Conscious Events.)

In a similar way, when we look forward to a future conscious experience, we can again say that this is already happening; just as when we approach a landmark such as a building, it is already in existence before we reach it.

This is a moment once again to remind ourselves that although we have removed time from our understanding of existence we have not eliminated the time dimension. The relationships between all of the above discrete conscious events are governed by strict laws that are equivalent to the rules governing how events are related according to time as we understand it in the everyday sense.

Now, the obvious objection to all of this is to say, ‘My conscious experiences in the past cannot still exist, because if they did I would still be consciously experiencing them! If I’m not consciously experiencing them, then who is?’ (By ‘still consciously experiencing them’ we clearly do not mean ‘experiencing them as memories’; we mean experiencing them as they are happening in the here and now). Likewise, we feel obliged to say, ‘My conscious experiences in the future cannot yet exist, because if they did I would be consciously experiencing them now’. We surely must insist that the only conscious experience that exists at all is the one we are having NOW.

Clearly we need an answer to this if we are to make any progress at all with this line of thinking. But let’s be patient: there is an answer to these questions.

For the moment let us remind ourselves that ‘being consciously aware’ is something that an object that we have called a ‘Host’ - i.e. a collection of matter such as the human nervous system - does. Let’s put it more strongly: the identity of the Host is not what it is; it is what it does. Being is doing.

Imagine you are suddenly confronted by a famous person – say Bill Clinton. You may say, ‘Excuse me. Am I speaking to Bill Clinton?’ Now, according to our way of thinking, instead of ‘Am I speaking to Bill Clinton’ it would be more realistic of you to say something like ‘Am I speaking to the object that does Bill Clinton?’

So, when we think about the sequence in space-time of all the discrete conscious events of a particular Host – that tiny strand as we envisage it – we are able to acknowledge that what we have identified as the Host is not the same physical object for each conscious event. It is different for each one.

Traditionally we think that this is because the cells, molecules and atoms are gradually being replaced all the time. But we can also insist that the whole Universe, of which the Host is a part, is in a continuous state of change – it is expanding. So for any two conscious events that we select in the life of a Host, physically the Host is different. By this reasoning, my nervous system that is ‘doing’ my present NOW experience is not the same nervous system that ‘did’ either of the two past conscious experiences I described earlier – experiencing my teacher showing me where to hang my coat on my first day at school nearly 55 years ago and experiencing reading the last word of the Alan Bennett short story 6 days ago.

In fact we could define ‘Host’ in a slightly different way to how we have thought of this concept up until now. We could define a Host as a bit of the space-time Universe that engages in the activity associated with a discrete conscious event.

According to this way of thinking the number of Hosts in the Universe equates to the number of discrete conscious events. Trillions and trillions. So what remains the same about those discrete conscious events that ‘belong to’ the same Host as we have previously defined it (e.g. the same human being)? Well, to begin with, these little dots that we envisage are highly organised: they form separate strands. But more profoundly, all the points on a given strand have one thing in common: they do (we would normally say have) the same Soul and this is unique to that strand.

Meditation

In the next chapter I shall discuss in greater depth the last point I made. But for the moment, it is worth spending time contemplating the profound implications of one of the ideas that I have introduced in this chapter, namely that we can consider every conscious experience in the Universe to be always ‘in existence’. In other words, there is nothing privileged in the space-time Universe of Conscious Events about the conscious experience you are having now.

One of the spheres of human experience for which this idea has profound implications is mourning.

Nearly all of us have been saddened by the death of a loved one, probably more than once. We miss that person and yearn to see him or her again. We may comfort ourselves by thinking that the person has gone to ‘the spirit world’ and thus continues to live (and can communicate with us); or that the person has gone to Heaven and we shall be seeing him or her again in due course; and so on.

Unfortunately, there is absolutely no reason to believe any of this.

What may comfort us is the knowledge (if my reasoning is correct) that all the conscious experiences that the person had in his or her lifetime still exist (are still happening or being done). These include those conscious experiences that involve ourselves. So we can say that the happy moments that we enjoyed with that person are still happening, still being experienced by both of us. (As I said earlier we have yet to tackle the obvious question ‘Experienced by whom?’)

There is, of course, a downside to this. All the moments of unhappiness, pain and distress that the person experienced are also still happening, still being experienced. The same goes for you and me and everybody else. We cannot say of some terrible event or period of history – famine, plague, war genocide (e.g. the Holocaust) and so on - ‘Their suffering is over’. It isn’t and never will be.

One way to meditate on