Self-Awareness: Awareness of Possible Pasts

Now that the idea of memories and pattern recognition has been defined via the concept of the field of choice, you may notice there's an awareness missing.

• Choices and willpower are your chosen direction amidst the possibilities laid out in front of you.
• Pattern recognition is the ability to predict the result of different choices, or essentially "see" into the fifth dimension, in the future direction.
• Memory is the ability to see the path you've already taken in the fifth dimension.

What subject experience would involve the sight in the fifth dimension in the past direction? Can we even experience that?

http://i.imgur.com/2y3FxNZ.png

Now that we've laid the groundwork, we can choose to look at our senses from an alternative point of view. Previously, we attempted to list each subjective experience and figure out how to define it in terms of an awareness of the universe and consciousness. Alternatively, we can now look at different potential "sights" and awarenesses of the universe, and determine if there's an associated subjective experience.

• We are aware of energy waves (via sound).
• We are not directly aware of gravity.
• We are aware of gravity's effects on the strong nuclear force (via touch).
• We are aware of the hormones associated with certain emotions.
• We are not directly aware of our white blood cells.

Are we aware of the fifth dimension in the direction of the past, outside of our memory? I believe we are, and I think that's the concept traditionally known as self-awareness.

When we think about the past and how we acted, we remember our actions and their consequences. For example, you may remember when you were angry and screwed up a career interview due to that anger. You may also have a memory of a time when you were optimistic and dominated an interview due to that confidence. Self-awareness is simply putting them together, and being aware how your mood could have completely changed the outcome of a negative situation (e.g. regret) or positive situation (e.g. "I almost gave up!").

Think about this in terms of the field of choice. You are using your brain to be aware of different potential paths you could have taken. Self-awareness is simply using your memory and your brain to imagine different possibilities in the past (the red arrows in the image above). Hopefully the result of increased self-awareness is to then use that awareness of past choices (or even past long term habits) to see different possibilities in the future (the cyan arrows in the image above).

A highly self-aware person is aware of their true underlying motivations and how different motivations could have led to different paths in life (the red arrows). Such a person is able to step out into the fifth dimension (seeing themselves from a third-party perspective) and visualize how their short term choices and long term habits have dictated their path. I alluded to this in my article regarding mind over matter.

Spiritual leaders talk about vague concepts such as "higher planes of consciousnesses". For example, the popular book from the 1970's "Master Game: Pathways to Higher Consciousness Beyond the Drug Experience", the author describes how meditation is the mechanism to achieve higher "planes of consciousness" (which, as an aside, he very poorly defined). I believe that concept can simply be categorized as increasing your sight into the fifth dimension. Being able to "step back" and see your life from an abstract, rather than concrete, perspective, and be more self-reflective. I believe this, because the method through which they describe achieving a higher plane of consciousness is by increasing self-awareness via meditation. Yet it's important that we as a species ground our concepts in logic and data, as I previously discussed in my article regarding the role of philosophy.

When you try to guess how past actions could have changed your current situation, your sight in the fifth dimension in the past is blurrier the further back you attempt to look. Just as it's difficult to predict the result of choices in the future (your sight along the cyan arrows is blurrier the further out you try to predict), the same applies to the past.

To increase your self-awareness (which incidentally is the goal of meditation and an important piece of the vague concept of enlightenment), you simply practice being truly aware of which choices led you to the present moment.

This allows you to make different choices going forward due to an increased sight along the fifth dimension.

Colloquially, "know thyself" and by being more mindful of how you've acted, and the consequences or results of those actions (both positive and negative), you increase your self-awareness muscle and make better choices in the future.

As usual, our senses list now looks like the following (I've slightly modified some of the wording):

Sense	Awareness of...
Sight	Photons
Sound	Energy Waves
Touch	Nuclear Force
Taste	Chemical Structure
Smell	Chemical Structure
Emotions	Hormone Levels
Logic/Rationality	Mathematics
Empathy	Other Awarenesses
Memory	Past Choices
Pattern Recognition	Future Possibilities
Willpower	Present Choices
Self-Awareness	Past Possibilities

Field of Choice

This blog post is an amalgum of my series on senses and consciousness and my posts discussing the physics of the universe.

Fifth Dimension

Once we delve down into the structure of the universe, we hone in on time (the present moment), we hone in on space (subatomic particles and forces), and yet we see that there is an additional component: probabilities.

What if we defined probabilities as the fifth dimension? As in: matter/energy moves through time (and therefore the past and future are real and can be connected via wormholes), but also moves through probabilities (there are different probable energy levels that energy lives in).

There are possible trajectories a photon could take through space, and there are waves of those probable locations for the photon (and therefore possible trajectories through probabilities, or the fifth dimension).

Gravity and quantum mechanics are irreconcilable right now, possibly because gravity explains spacetime as a four dimensional universe, and yet quantum mechanics deals with probabilities. Einstein had a lot of trouble believing that God would play dice with the universe, as per his famous quote.

I already presented the idea that we are aware of probabilities through our willpower. But what is willpower exactly? What exactly are we aware of?

I believe that we are actually aware of our motion through the fifth dimension.

Visualization

We visualized our four dimensional universe last year as a single block.

At the end of that article, I made the claim that a multiverse could be visualized as a morphing four dimensional universe.

But a multiverse is nothing more than a five dimensional universe. Rather than visualizing a multiverse as a morphing four dimensional universe, allow us to visualize it as what I call a Field of Choice.

In the article about visualizing a four dimensional universe, we collapsed one of the spatial dimensions. In this article, we will collapse all spatial dimensions into one, to more easily visualize. 

Allow the dimension of choice be orthogonal to time, which is orthogonal to all the spatial dimensions.

Our lives through a four dimensional universe would simply be a straight line through the Field of Choice. But then you would simply be a passive observer, possibly only making decisions based on the highest probability.

I assert that we have free will. Which is nothing more than us moving through the fifth dimension of probabilities. We make choices every day, and are therefore moving through the fifth dimension by collapsing the probabilities in our neurons.

Now imagine a curve moving through the fifth dimension, not just the three spatial dimensions, as time progresses. We would constantly have to be making choices, visualizing possible futures.

We can take our theory of pattern recognition being seen as another sense into the future, as actually a sense into both the fourth and fifth dimensions. We can see the future, and also other “nearby” choices.

It’s possible that quantum physics’ models of probabilities could never resolve its conflict with Einstein’s theory of gravity until the idea of choice (converging the probabilities) is seen as the fifth dimension the same way time was seen as the fourth dimension.

This the true multiverse. Physicists discuss the possibility of multiple universes existing simultaneously with different probable outcomes, and that's simply what I refer to as the Field of Choice. To define that multiverse, we simply have to define an additional dimension of the universe as the probabilities.

This theory also explains how we have free will, as well as have subjective experiences which observe the state of the universe. Our motion through the multiverse is how our free will operates.

The truth is, we don’t live in a four dimensional universe. We live in a fifth dimensional universe. And the fifth dimension is choice. Our sight into the past and present is singular in the past, and varied in the future.

Applications & Implications

Daily Life

Now that we can visualize how free will may operate through a multiverse, let's discuss possible ways in which this could affect our mood and our day-to-day interactions.

• Fear of Death: Our pattern recognition sight is unable to see what happens after death. Our fear of death is simply an awareness of the fact that our sight, everything we know we’re going to be in control to change, is limited to our life. It’s a void past which we don’t know. We have no feedback from what happens to our awareness and willpower after death and that’s scary.
• Fear of _________: Any fear could simply be seen as attempting to avoid unfavorable spots in the Field of Choice. For example, fear of embarrassment could be seen as using our pattern recognition and memories to avoid unfavorable spots on the field of choice based on socially acceptable ways to interact.
• Depression: Could be pining about things that are set in stone in the past, coupled with a lack of motivation to exercise our will across the fifth dimension (unmotivated).
• Anxiety: Could be the feeling of frantically trying to not screw up which choice you make and constantly trying to avoid unfavorable spots in the Field of Choice.
• Optimism & Empowerment: The feeling that you have a wide range of motion in the fifth dimension. That your choices are capable of moving you further across the dimension of possibilities.
• Pessimism & Realism: Understanding that there are high-probable outcomes outside of your control which may not be favorable.

An instinctual awareness of a fifth dimension has even permeated our language. “If I choose X, I go down one path in life. If I choose Y I go down a different path.” That’s our minds naturally and instinctually being aware of the fifth dimension of probabilities and the fact that we can carve out different curves through the multiverse, not just a straight line.

I understand that it's entirely possible that there's determinism, and that the universe simply chooses for us the highest probability events. Yet it's also equally possible that by believing in a five dimensional universe (or however many spatial dimensions our physicists find plus time and probabilities), this allows free will to operate within the current paradigm of physics.

Physics

In addition, if time travel were to exist, this concept of free will and choice as a fifth dimension could resolve the grandfather paradox. If you go back in time, your willpower is essentially carving a new path in a parallel universe. There's no paradox if there's a fifth dimension.

When physicists discuss a multiverse, for those who understand what a dimension truly represents, they are simply discussing slicing (a type of dimensionality reduction), along the fifth dimension. The parallel universe hypothesis is nothing more or less than a recognition of probabilities being the fifth dimension.

Even our empathy is simply an understanding that there are other beings with free will also navigating this Field of Choice, allows us to have a sense of morality.

Religion

This is what Buddhists talk about when they discuss how we're all in this life together and make the entire world of sentient beings their in-group. Also the concept of reincarnation can be related to the idea that our awareness moving through the Field of Choice will find another entity to be aware of after the death of our neurons. This is what Christians talk about when they discuss that God is omnipotent, as He would be a being capable of navigating and seeing this entire Field of Choice.

It's a working possible way to reconcile some inconsistencies between gravity, quantum probabilities, religion, free will, morality, and self-awareness, with some possible real-world implications of this philosophy in regards to psychology and how to live one's life.

Fate

Fate may given you a tunnel through this multiverse, or Field of Choice, based on the fact that certain outcomes are low-probability events (the edges of the tunnel through the fifth dimension) and certain outcomes are high probability events (the middle of the tunnel through the fifth dimension is easy to move through). But free will allows you to move through the tunnel. It takes more willpower to create highly improbable events in your life come true, such as starting from a disadvantaged position early in life into a huge financial success, but you can still use strength of will to move through that tunnel. A highly financially successful life may be farther away along the fifth dimension of probability when you start from nothing, but willpower can move you closer to highly improbable events by the choices you make through the Field of Choice.

That's the takeaway for how philosophy can affect your day-to-day interactions, choices, and emotions.

Visualizing 5D

How would one go about visualizing the fifth dimension? Or, more specifically, how would our four dimensional universe look, from a higher dimension?

Let's start with a simple timeline.

In this example, the dark blue represents a one dimensional timeline. To the left represents the past, and to the right represents the future.

What if we wanted to include a spatial dimension to this timeline?

As previously, the left represents the past and to the right represents the future. But we can now take into account a single spatial dimension as representing top and bottom. Maybe that dimension is the distance from the earth.

Extending that idea further, let's add another spatial dimension.

For visualization purposes, if we pretend for a second that the universe only has two spatial dimensions, like a movie, then this is the entire history of the universe represented as a solid object. We've basically replaced a spatial third dimension with time.

Your lifetime would be represented as a section of this object.

A moment in time capturing the universe exactly as it stands right now would simply be a slice of this object.

That slice would represent the exact position of the galaxies, the earth, etc., like a photograph.

What if we lived in the fifth dimension and could change the four dimensional universe?

We could push on one side of it.

We could shape it as we saw fit. One change at one section, would change the entire set of past events and future events. The position of the galaxies, the consequences of all of our decisions, could be completely different.

Taking a slice out of the future of this changed universe would be very different from the future of a non-changed universe.

In fact, the universe itself could be sculpted as one saw fit. Each possible sculpture would represent a possible universe, from the big bang to the big crunch, at the will of a fifth dimension.

Final note for fun: an animated sculpture, with the universe morphing, could represent a multiverse.