Humans are unique in that we can believe facts that don’t comport with our intuition.

We intuit that causes precede their effects. For example, if you tip an egg off a table, it falls to the floor and breaks—this outcome is not surprising. However, if the broken egg were to jump off the floor and reassemble itself on the table, that would be amazing.

Magicians mystify us by seemingly defying “natural” laws, making things disappear and then reappear without any obvious explanation.

We expect time to flow evenly so that I can set my watch by asking you what time it is. I expect you and me to run on the same time.

Yet, Einstein’s Relativity demonstrates that movement and gravity each affect time. The famous “twin paradox” shows that identical twins will age differently if one is moving at relativistic speeds or exists in a strong gravitational field.

They will not only seem to age differently, but their time will literally pass at different rates. The traveling twin will return home to find his brother has aged more. Time affects reality.

Quantum mechanics, the science of the very small, presents many counterintuitive facts. Small particles can exist in two different places, simultaneously. They can seem to communicate faster than light speed, instantaneously no matter how far apart they are ( “entanglement”).

Particles can be well-defined or vaguely defined wave-like; they can shift properties merely by being observed without being touched, as exemplified by the double-slit experiment.

Einstein’s masterwork, Relativity, seems at odds with Quantum Mechanics (QE),  though both descriptions of reality have been amply verified, countless times, and both make claims that mere observation can affect test results.

When a mathematically proven effect cannot be explained, intuitively or experientially, we may defend it, but always will feel uncomfortable with our explanations. So we continually ask the most difficult question in science: “Why?”

Why do the above effects occur? Why do Relativity and QE not meet in the middle? Why is reality so counterintuitive?

“Why” is often answered by a speculation (What if?), and I’ll give you one, here, one I’ve not heard of, though it well may already have been suggested and even discarded. If you know, please tell me.

What if . . .

Relativity and QE share at least one factor: Time. The speed of light and gravity waves, the simultaneity of entanglement and of particles existing in two locations, the measures of gravity relate to time. (At Earth’s surface, the acceleration of gravity is about 9.8 metres (32 feet) per second per second.)

We think of time as being a river in which everything swims, a constantly flowing river engulfing everything.

But, what if time isn’t a background dimension flowing uniformly, but a local property—like mass, charge, or spin—carried individually by every particle?

In this view, each atom, each electron, has its own “tempo”—its own block of time. These timeblocks don’t always align, especially at the quantum level. When particles interact or entangle, they synchronize their local time states, at least temporarily.

The “spooky action at a distance” we call entanglement may simply be the expression of a shared time, both forward and backward.

The macro world we experience is the large-scale statistical average of countless synchronized timeblocks. It feels smooth, continuous, and directional, not because time is that way, but because differences fade in the averaging process.

Wavefunction collapse, the observer effect, and even quantum uncertainty may all reflect time as a localized variable. The quantum world looks “weird” because we are using a global clock to measure systems that don’t share it.

This view bridges relativity and quantum mechanics not by changing the math, but by changing the metaphor. If time is a property, not a stage, then what we observe is not paradox—it’s parallax.

Moiré Time: A Visual Unification of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics

Summary Physics has long sought a bridge between the smooth spacetime of relativity and the probabilistic strangeness of quantum mechanics.

I suggest that the unifying variable may not be mass, charge, or spin, but time itself. Not as a universal dimension, but as a localized quantum property, unique to every particle, layered across reality.

Visualized as overlapping temporal patterns, like moire patterns. this “moiré time” forms the composite image we experience as the macroscopic world. The slightest move of one pattern has far-reaching and profound effects on the overall moire phenomenon.

That model may clarify why quantum phenomena appear paradoxical to observers embedded in emergent macroscopic time.

Core Idea In relativity, time is malleable: it stretches under speed and bends under gravity. In QE, time seems to be everywhere and nowhere.

Entanglement occurs instantaneously yet obeys causality. The two-slit experiment suggests particles take all paths, simultaneously.

Uncertainty binds energy and time. And every measurement has a temporal component: when it is made defines what it measures.

The energy–time relationship is widely used to relate quantum state lifetime to measured energy widths but its formal derivation is fraught with confusing issues about the nature of time.

What if every particle carried an individualized, internal time structure—a “time block”—analogous to spin or phase? These timeblocks may oscillate, rotate, or interact with others. The macroscopic flow of time, with its singular direction and steady rhythm, could then be seen as a statistical average of many overlapping timeblocks.

This would create moiré-like interference patterns, where the observer’s own time structure interacts with those of the measured particles.

Entanglement would represent a shared or synchronized time pattern, explaining the apparent “instantaneous” connection.

Wavefunction collapse could occur not because of a mystical observer effect, but due to temporal alignment between observer and particle.

Unifying Power Time, in this view, is the only variable that fully inhabits both the relativistic and quantum worlds.

It is common to the changing of clocks in gravitational fields and to the uncertainty of energy in quantum transitions.

Rather than treating time as a background coordinate, we elevate it to a quantum participant. Reality becomes a familiar phenomenon—a moiré of overlapping timeblocks, each pattern contributing to the image seen by each observer.

Conclusion

By imagining time not as a single flow but as a field of local temporal patterns, we gain a new view of a merger between quantum weirdness and relativity. Time re-envisioned may be the only variable rich and strange enough to belong to both worlds, and simple enough to unify them.

What appears to be a paradox may, in fact, be parallax—the artifact of perspective across entangled timeblocks. It may be why observation changes reality.

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Delving a  bit deeper

1. Can time be an entangled property?

When two particles become entangled, the state of one particle is instantly related to the state of the other, regardless of the distance between them.

If the properties, spin or polarization,  can be entangled, why not time? In fact, in delayed choice quantum eraser experiments, it seems like actions in the present affect outcomes in the past.

The delayed choice quantum eraser is an experiment in quantum mechanics that explores the peculiar consequences of the double-slit experiment and quantum entanglement.

It demonstrates that the behavior of quantum particles (whether they act like particles or waves) can be influenced by measurements made after the particles have been detected.

Maybe what’s entangled isn’t just spin—it’s the timelines of two particles. When you measure one, you’re not just collapsing a property, you’re collapsing the time experience of both particles.

That’s not faster-than-light signaling—it’s shared chronology collapsing into coherence.

It seems time can be entangled—if it’s a property, not a background.

2. Can time be in a superposition?

In quantum mechanics, quantum superposition is a fundamental principle stating that a quantum state can exist in multiple states simultaneously until it is measured.

Quantum states exist in superpositions. Could a particle be in multiple time states at once?

That’s been proposed, actually—there’s a field called quantum time crystals which suggests that, under the right conditions, events may not happen in a definite sequence.

Quantum time crystals are systems of particles whose lowest-energy state involves repetitive motion, and they cannot lose energy to the environment.

So again: If time is a property, it can exist in superposition, just like position or energy, and in fact, that may be another term for entanglement.

3. Can time be quantized? Many physicists suspect that at the Planck scale, time is not continuous.

If it’s discrete, then each “tick” of time may be like a photon of time—maybe even exchangeable, the way photons mediate forces.

Planck Length: Approximately 1.616 × 10⁻³⁵ meters, the smallest measurable length.   Planck Time: About 5.391 × 10⁻⁴⁴ seconds, the time it takes light to travel one Planck length. 

If time isn’t a smooth flow, but a quantum resource, like angular momentum, that would fit in with the idea that each atom carries its own quantized time structure, like a wristwatch with digital ticks.

4. Can time be non-local?

That’s the heart of the entanglement puzzle. In current theory, properties seem to collapse non-locally, but time is still assumed to flow locally.

But if time is itself a correlatable quantum variable, then non-locality might simply mean: two particles share a single time state across space. There’s no signal—just synchronization

Most quantum interpretations are mathematical patches on a broken visualization: we don’t know what is happening, we just know the math works. But what if time isn’t the canvas but part of the paint?

That might not provide equations, but rather a map for what to visualize.

What would the universe look like if time were a locally defined variable, like mass or spin? Exactly what the universe looks like now. And that is the point. The universe already provides us with evidence of quantum time:

• Entanglement is just a shared time state. No faster-than-light communication or hidden variables.
• Quantum weirdness is normalized.
• Superposition is the time ambiguity demonstrated by Relativity.
• Wavefunction collapse is the resolution into one temporal framework.
• The observer effect is not “consciousness affects physics.” It’s a clash of local time states.
• Twin paradox is not paradoxical—it’s two local time properties interacting through spacetime, not flowing within it.

We posit that the macro world isn’t fundamentally different. It’s just a more synchronized, harmonized average of billions of local time systems. Coherence wins out. Local uniqunesses wash away.

A quantized time could be the long-sought bridge connecting Relativity and QE.

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One last speculation for illustrative purposes.

Consider that time might resemble mass in that it is not fundamental in itself, but rather emerges from interaction with a pervasive field.

While some have speculated that time is composed of discrete units known as chronons, we might go further and ask: What if time, like mass, is not fundamental but arises from a field?

Just as the Higgs field’s excitations produce mass, a “time field” might give rise to both the flow and structure of time. In such a view, the chronon would be not just a discrete tick, but the quantum ripple of that field, a “tempon,” so to speak.

In this view, time would not merely be a coordinate or background dimension, but a derived property—an emergent feature of interactions with an as-yet-undiscovered field, whose quantum excitation (if such exists) might one day be detectable, as the Higgs boson was.

Whether this “time field” is real or metaphorical, the comparison invites a deeper exploration of whether time, like mass, is not something possessed but something conferred.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell

Search #monetarysovereignty

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MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell;

https://www.academia.edu/

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A Government’s Sole Purpose is to Improve and Protect The People’s Lives.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

THE SEARCH FOR REALITY

What we perceive is not reality. It is an illusion. This post describes a search for reality.

Imagine someone who is just learning English, and a speaker says to them, “Hold your horses. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth; don’t flog a dead horse, and don’t put the cart before the horse.”

Wouldn’t that person believe you are talking about horses, when not one line has anything to do with horses?

I give that as an example of how our senses interpret input. Interpretation is not reality.

When we see, what we see are photons, but our visual system does not interpret them as photons. Instead, the photons are translated into things of all sizes, shapes, and colors.

We “see,” for instance a table — or rather the photons coming off that table into our eyes — and this “seeing” is verified by other senses. We can “feel” the table, though what we feel is not a table but mostly hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen atoms (for a wood table).

Those atoms don’t “know” they are wood. They simply are very common atoms that happen to be arranged into something we perceive as wood. Also, they don’t know what color they are. We perceive them as brown, flat and shiny, though the atoms are none of those.

We don’t “see” all photons, just those in our visual range, which differs from other animals’ (and plants) reaction range. Most photons hitting our bodies are not sensed by our eyes.

Some photons are sensed by our skin as heat. They are mostly in the infrared range. Ultraviolet photons are sensed by the melanocytes, which darken in response, giving us sun tans. The vast majority of photons are not sensed at all.

Try to imagine a world where we could “see” radio range photons. Much would be transparent. Much would be invisible. In some cases, we could see around corners. What we currently believe to be reality would be different, depending on the specific radio wavelengths we could interpret.

Similarly, we do not hear music. We interpret sound waves — those in our hearing range — to be music, or words, or thunder. But the waves are none of those. They are merely movements of air molecules.

Our entire bodies continually receive stimuli, thousands every second, from outside and from inside, each of which we interpret uniquely.

All of these interpretations constitute what we consider reality, though none of them is real. Red is not red. It is our own invention. A note on a piano, an itch, a pain, an odor, a taste — they are not reality. They all are interpretations of stimuli.

What we perceive is an interpretation of the stimuli we receive. And what we believe is our interpretation of those interpretations.

“Big, small, loud, soft, heavy, light, fast, slow — all are interpretations of our interpretations of the stimuli we receive. At best. What we believe is two levels from reality.

But it gets worse in our search for reality.

Our beliefs are an amalgum of what we remember, what we sense, and how we combine them into a whole. Consider someone wearing a red dress to a funeral. You make several interpretations.

1. What is it? A dress? A robe? A costume?
2. What is its purpose?
3. Is it red, and if so, what shade of red?
4. Is it beautiful, ugly, or plain?
5. Is it appropriate?

These are all based on many factors, including our immediate responses to stimuli, our memory of past responses, and our combined interpretations.

And together, this is “consciousness,” which we define, not in vague metaphysical terms but very simply: Consciousness is the response to stimuli. The more stimuli and the greater the response, the greater the consciousness.

Ironically, much of our “consciousness” happens without our awareness. We are not aware that individual photons are hitting the rods and cones in our eyes. We are aware only of the translations our visual system makes of those photons.

We can remember only a small percentage of what we have interpreted. We can bring forth into awareness a small percentage of what we remember. Everything we know evolves from that same source: Our memory of interpretations.

And that also is where dreams come from.

Thus, dreamed “reality” and awake “reality” have the same sources, and so at first, the same degree of confidence. While dreaming, we believe our dreams. While awake, we believe our awake interpretations. It is our information processing system that sorts them out to create a coherent pattern of what we believe

(There is “lucid” dreaming, in which we know we are dreaming and can even control a dream to some extent. This has the same basis as every other thing we believe.)

Everything remembers. From the smartest human to a brick in a wall, everything retains the scars of previous encounters with stimuli, and these scars are called “memory.”

Though everything meets the definition of consciousness — the response to stimuli — we do not know whether everything dreams. However, there is evidence that many animals dream.

Dreaming is merely the brain’s assembly of memories, beliefs, and desires, which is exactly what awake thinking is. The only difference between a dream and an awake thought is the brain’s interpretation. Otherwise, they are the same in that they are illusions of reality.

Sometimes, there can be confusion, in that a person may have a memory of a dream about something that did not occur, and believe it did occur. (“Did that really happen, or did I dream it?”)

All of what we believe has been filtered through our brain, and may have only a distant relationship to any reality.

But it gets worse in our search for reality.

Quantum mechanics tells us that quantum particles do not have definite attributes like position in space, momentum, and spin.

Perhaps the most bizarre property we’ve discovered about the Universe is that our physical reality doesn’t seem to be governed by purely deterministic laws.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that you cannot know everything about a quantum particle.

It says it is impossible to know both the position and momentum of a quantum particle with perfect accuracy at the same time. The more precisely you can measure one of these properties, the less precise you can be about the other.

In short, you can never discover everything it’s possible to know about every atom in the universe.

And even if you could, and you owned this impossibly huge computer, you still would not be able to calculate exactly what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen.

Is reality simply unknowable?  Yet, knowing reality is exactly what each human brain attempts to do with the limited stimuli it receives.

But it gets worse in our search for reality.

According to Einstein’s Relativity, reality depends on an observer. This has been proved many times. For instance, in the famous “twin paradox,” one twin takes a rocket to another planet and then returns, while the other twin remains on Earth.

The stay-at-home twin sees that the round trip has taken a year, but the returning twin believes it has taken less than a year. Upon his return, the twins discover that the traveling twin is younger than the stay-at-home twin.

So what is the fundamental reality?” Was the twin gone for a year or for less than a year? The answer is, both are correct. Each twin lives a different fundamental reality because time is affected by motion and gravity, especially very fast (near light speed motion) and strong (near black holes) gravity.

If you were to come near a black hole, your reality would be that you are being sucked faster and faster into the black hole and entering it with no change.

For someone standing on Earth with a radio telescope, their reality would be that you are moving ever more slowly toward the black hole, eventually to be almost stationary on the outside for millions of years.

Two different realities, both real and both accurate, and most importantly, both dependent on the observer.

This observer-dependent reality is what makes a search for reality fruitless and alien. In our experience, stimuli as translated by our brain, exist at a defined time and place and move at a defined speed, no matter who is watching. That is what we call an “underlying reality.”

Except there seems to be no underlying reality. Every object in the universe, including you and me, is moving at its own speed, affected by a different amount of gravity, and interpreting stimuli differently. There is an infinite number of realities, all equally reliable and truly real — none more “real” than the others.

Given the probability of infinite realities, and that each is legitimate, what can we deduce about the fundamental mystery of quantum mechanics: Entanglement?

When two particles, such as a pair of photons or electrons, become entangled, their properties always are correlated even if they are light years apart.

“It may be tempting to think that the particles are somehow communicating with each other across these great distances, but that is not the case,” says Thomas Vidick, a professor of computing and mathematical sciences at Caltech. “There can be correlation without communication,” and the particles “can be thought of as one object.”

Entanglement can also occur among hundreds, millions, and even more particles. The phenomenon is thought to take place throughout nature, among the atoms and molecules in living species and within metals and other materials.

Science believes that what we know is reality. But, as we have already seen, what we know is our brain’s interpretation of stimulus responses, which are themselves interpretations of the effect of stimuli — two steps away from the stimuli themselves.

That is, the brain synapses receive signals in electronic code. The code might be interpreted as: “Here is a strong signal along with a weak signal in these two particular synapses.”

Then the brain interprets that as: “When you receive a strong signal and a weak signal in these two synapses, and you are looking at a circle, that circle is bigger than the one next to it. Otherwise, it is smaller.”

Confusion in those kinds of interpretations is what leads to illusions, for instance, where parallel lines seem skewed, as below.

 

In attempting to find reality, intuition fails us. Special relativity shows that two observers moving relative to each other won’t agree on what events are simultaneous.

What one observer considers “now” could be in the past or future for someone else. That is, I literally could see your future — not just predict it, but literally see it happening. That’s reality.

Then there is the “block universe” hypothesis, where past, present, and future all “exist” equally. The entire history of the universe is laid out like a loaf of bread.

We are not moving through time; we are located at a particular slice of the time dimension. There’s no universal “now”—just different cross-sections of this block from different observers’ perspectives.

Even Einstein believed in the block universe. He wrote, “For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

In classical physics, energy must be preserved; you neither can create nor destroy energy (though you can convert it to and from mass (E = mc^2)

In quantum mechanics, information is preserved. In Wheeler’s delayed-choice experiment, A photon seems to “decide” whether it behaves like a wave or a particle after you choose whether to observe its path.

This raises the idea that just the availability of information determines physical outcomes. So the mere potential for obtaining information changes what happens. Information is not just about what is known—but about what can be known

Mathematics is our one comprehension bridge between classical reality and quantum reality. Only through mathematics can we begin to discover any of the many possible realities.

SUMMARY

1. There is no fundamental reality. Each observer experiences a slightly different reality.
2. Waking reality and sleep reality (dreams) have the same basis, and can be distinguished only subjectively.
3. What we perceive is a translation of our reactions to stimuli. Each observer translates differently.
4. Not only is information a functional part of reality, but even the potential for acquiring information affects reality.
5. The past, present, and future may be connected in ways that are not classically intuitive.

 

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell; MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell; https://www.academia.edu/

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A Government’s Sole Purpose is to Improve and Protect The People’s Lives.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

In earlier posts, I have suggested that consciousness is nothing more than the reaction to stimuli, and that since all things react to stimuli, all things are conscious to some degree. It was a physically rock-solid definition, lacking the usual magic and mystery of the metaphysics that provide most definitions of consciousness.

What follows is another version of consciousness, one not quite as rock-solid, one providing a bit more mystery, but based on the mysteries inherent in Relativity and quantum mechanics.

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is'” is, said Bill Clinton in 1998

At the time, people mocked it as evasive — and in context, it was.

But in quantum mechanics, “is” becomes fuzzy and observer-dependent. Is Schrödinger’s cat alive? Dead? Both? The “is” becomes contingent on observation, context, and interpretation.

Thus, there is no fundamental reality. There are no bright lines between “is” and “isn’t,” between here and there, between now and later.  Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics both say so.

For most of human history, certain traits of the universe were taken as givens. An object had mass because it was heavy. It experienced time because we all do. It looked red because it was red. These seemed like natural, inherent properties of things.

But one by one, science has shown that many of these “inherent” qualities are actually the result of deeper, more fundamental processes.

Take mass. The discovery of the Higgs field changed our understanding of what  “heavy” really means.

According to modern physics, particles acquire mass through their interaction with this invisible, all-pervading field. A rock doesn’t simply “have” mass.  It gets mass by being “slowed down” as it moves through the Higgs field. Something we once thought was innate turned out to be conferred.

The same shift has happened with time. To our ancestors, time was a constant. It ticked the same for everyone, everywhere. But Einstein showed that time flows differently depending on your speed and gravitational environment.

Time, like mass, isn’t fixed. What we once assumed was absolute turned out to be contingent.

Color is another illusion of inheritance. What we call “red” isn’t a property embedded in an apple or a sunset. It’s the result of how our visual system interprets wavelengths of light, which themselves are stretched into different colors by speed.

Someone else—say, a species with different eyes or a person born blind—would experience the same wavelengths in completely different ways, or not at all. Color isn’t in the object; it’s in the interaction.

Even numbers, the bedrock of mathematics, reveal this ambiguity when stretched to their limits. The number “1” seems like the most definite idea imaginable, yet in calculus, 1 can be represented as an infinite series: 0.999999… repeating. In a strict sense, 1 and 0.999… are the same.

But in another sense, they show how even precision has fuzziness when viewed closely enough.

Thus, reality does not exist as a separate phenomenon. Reality is dependent on the observer. That does not only mean that we each sense reality differently,  but that reality itself actually is different for each of us.

Your time, your size measurement, and your distance are all different from mine. You live in a slightly different universe from me.

Example: Imagine two twins, Alice and Bob. Alice stays on Earth. Bob climbs aboard a spaceship that travels near the speed of light to a distant star and back.

To both of them, time feels normal. Bob eats, sleeps, and ages at what seems to him a regular pace. But when he returns to Earth, he finds that Alice has aged much more than he has.

According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, the faster you move through space, the slower you move through time, from the perspective of someone not moving with you.

This is called time dilation. At speeds close to the speed of light, this effect becomes dramatic. For example, if Bob travels fast enough, what seems like 5 years to him on the spaceship might seem like 50 years have passed for Alice on Earth.

So even though they’re twins, and even though they were the same age when Bob left, Bob is now younger than Alice. When they come together, Bob will see Alice as looking like his grandmother. That is the famous “twin paradox” that we have found to be true, but that our intuition denies.

This is not an illusion or a function of Bob’s and Alice’s sensory systems, but rather a literal fact. There are infinite realities.

It’s not a metaphor. It’s baked into how spacetime works. What changes is not just “perspective,” but measurable physical facts — how long something takes, how far something travels, how much something ages.

In short, there is not one underlying reality. There are infinite realities, though most of them differ by so small amounts that they are indistinguishable.

There is no absolute, shared “now,” and no single timeline or duration that everyone agrees on. Instead, there are infinite, coexisting realities — distinct but overlapping, like infinitely many slices through a 4D loaf of spacetime.

Most of these realities are so similar, especially locally, that they seem “normal.” Trees don’t look blurry, and we all agree on who won the Super Bowl.

But, consider the ‘fuzziness” of quantum particles. They don’t have definite properties until observed. Instead, they exist in superpositions — clouds of probabilities.

Quantum particles don’t “choose” a single state because they exist across a wide ensemble of universes in which they take on slightly different properties.

These “many realities” are inherent in the relativistic structure of the universe.

Perhaps the “fuzziness” we see isn’t due to particles jumping between states, but due to us sampling only a few slices of a much richer fabric. Most realities are “so similar as to be indistinguishable — except at the microscopic level.

Macroscopic systems (like tables, planets, and cats) are made of trillions of particles. Across most reference frames or branches, universes, their behaviors converge, like statistical averages.

But microscopic systems (like electrons, photons) are sensitive to even tiny variations between frames. So when we observe a single particle, we’re seeing an object whose reality is smeared across many frames, many slightly different universes. That smearing manifests as the probability wave in quantum mechanics.

Science, at its best, reveals that certainty is often the first casualty of deeper understanding. Each time we peel back a layer, we discover that what once seemed self-evident is actually emergent—produced by interactions, context, and relationships we hadn’t noticed before. This insight opens the door to a new possibility: Perhaps consciousness, too, is not something that living things simply “have.” Consider the possibility that consciousness, like mass or time or color, is conferred, i.e., bestowed by an underlying field or interaction. Something deeper. Something we haven’t yet named. There has been much debate about consciousness, not the least of which are the questions, “What is it?” and “What has it?”

We have discussed consciousness before, here, here, here, and elsewhere.  We have suggested that consciousness is the reaction to stimuli — the greater the reaction, the greater is consciousness.

That definition answers the often debated questions like, “Is a chimpanzee conscious?” A mouse? A bee? A tree? A bacterium? A virus? The Earth? The universe?

The answer to every question is, “Yes, to varying degrees, depending on their reaction to stimuli.”

Now that we can say what consciousness is and what has it, we are left with the question, “How did we get it?”

And to answer that question, I propose a completely different possibility from “reaction to stimuli.

Consider the possibility that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe, like gravity or electromagnetism.  Just as the Higgs field confers mass and the electromagnetic field governs charge, we might imagine a Consciousness Field that permeates all of space, quietly shaping the responsiveness of matter to its environment.

This isn’t how science currently defines consciousness. Most mainstream theories tie consciousness to neural complexity, emergent computation, or biological feedback loops. These views treat consciousness as something that emerges when a system becomes sufficiently complex, especially a brain.

But this creates a problem of definition. Where is the bright line between complex reactivity and consciousness? Does a bacterium have consciousness? Does a thermostat? What about a tree? A flame? A cow?

The “reaction to stimuli” definition answers those questions, but it is merely a definition, not a thing unto itself.

Now, here is consciousness as a thing: A consciousness field.

The Consciousness Field model posits that it is a field effect, and its intensity varies across entities, depending on their structure, state, and context.

Consider how mass works. Every particle interacts with the Higgs field, but not equally. Some, like the top quark, interact strongly and gain large mass; others, like photons, don’t interact at all and remain massless.

In the same way, perhaps every particle or system interacts with the Consciousness Field, but some—such as neurons in a human brain—interact intensely, while others—say, a rock or an electron—interact minimally.

Under this model, consciousness is not a mystery trapped inside the skull. It is a field-expressed phenomenon, like magnetism. And just as magnetism isn’t a property of magnets but of fields and charges, consciousness isn’t an essence confined to minds. It is a relational phenomenon that spans systems.

This may sound metaphysical, but it aligns with how science increasingly views the universe: not as a collection of isolated things, but as a web of interacting fields.

If the Consciousness Field exists, then consciousness might be not only distributed but coherent across time and space—perhaps even immune to time. That idea leads us to something strange and tantalizing: a link between consciousness and quantum entanglement.

Quantum entanglement is one of the most baffling phenomena in physics. Two particles—once entangled—can affect each other instantaneously, no matter how far apart they are. This isn’t just a limitation of our understanding; it’s been tested and confirmed in laboratory after laboratory. Somehow, information passes between entangled particles faster than the speed of light, or without even traveling through space at all. Einstein famously called it “spooky action at a distance.”

But what if it’s not spooky? What if entanglement isn’t a violation of space-time, but a glimpse into something more fundamental, something outside of space-time altogether?

If we imagine consciousness as arising from a field that is immune to time, then entanglement begins to look less strange. Perhaps the Consciousness Field doesn’t just pervade the universe; it connects it. Not by transmitting signals, but by sharing identity across distance.

Two entangled particles may not be communicating across space; they may be part of one same unified state, stitched together by a time-independent field.

This reframes entanglement: not as a mysterious connection, but as a consequence of nonlocal coherence. It would be a coherence mediated by the Consciousness Field.

If the Consciousness Field is not constrained by light-speed or the flow of time, then it could maintain correlations between particles without needing to “send” anything. Entanglement wouldn’t be transmission; it would be co-experience. Two parts of the same field, resonating in synchrony, no matter how far apart they are.

Such an idea could also help us visualize why quantum mechanics defies classical intuition. Our brains evolved in a world of slow things—rocks, apples, footsteps. We never evolved to visualize nonlocal, atemporal phenomena.

But intellectually, we know the “twin paradox” is real to each of us. The “entanglement paradox” is also real, but it still strains our intuitive understanding.

A creature that procreates by entanglement might find entanglement as intuitive as we find falling. Its “sense organs” might perceive correlations directly, just as we perceive light and shadow. To that creature, classical cause and effect might seem bizarrely indirect, like watching a Rube Goldberg machine in slow motion.

This doesn’t mean consciousness causes entanglement. It suggests something more radical: Consciousness and entanglement may both be manifestations of the same deep field. They may be different aspects of a reality that is not constrained by time, distance, or speed, and that only appears fragmented when filtered through our time-bound senses.

In this view, entanglement isn’t an odd corner of physics. It’s a window. And consciousness is the eye looking through it.

If consciousness is a field—timeless, nonlocal, and real—then physics may need to broaden its scope. Currently, science proceeds by measuring things: distance, time, mass, and charge. But if consciousness is not reducible to these categories, then our scientific tools may be tuned to the wrong frequency, like trying to weigh music with a ruler.

If consciousness is a field, then every conscious experience is a local excitation, a ripple in that field. Just as an electron is a ripple in the electromagnetic field, a moment of awareness (pain, joy, intention) may be a ripple in the Consciousness Field. These ripples would not be made of particles. They would be patterns of relation, coherent with other such patterns, across brains, species, or galaxies.

This leads to startling philosophical consequences. Identity, for instance, could be reimagined not as a separate “self” housed in a skull, but as a localization of the universal field. You are not a brain that happens to be conscious. You are consciousness that is currently being a brain.

The implications reach even further. If consciousness is nonlocal and timeless, then the distinction between life and non-life becomes blurred. Consciousness would not be something that emerges from matter at a certain level of complexity. It would be something that participates in matter from the start.

Just as the Higgs field endows particles with mass, the Consciousness Field might endow systems with the capacity to respond, to relate, to experience. Even in tiny degrees.

This would offer a new way to understand the continuum of awareness in nature, from the phototaxis of bacteria to the introspection of humans. There would be no bright line. There would be gradients of coherence within the Consciousness Field. Even rocks, though minimally reactive, would not be outside the field. They would simply be quieter.

Finally, if consciousness is immune to time, then perhaps memory is not just stored in the brain, but accessed through time—like tuning into a moment.

In sum, the hypothesis that consciousness is a timeless field would transform not only physics and philosophy, but our understanding of what it means to exist. You are not in the universe. You are the universe, looking back at itself, consciously.

If we did not already know of quantum entanglement, its discovery would be among the strongest arguments in favor of the Consciousness Field hypothesis. Two particles, separated by light-years, yet behaving as one—instantaneously—suggests a reality immune to the ordinary constraints of time and space.

In a sense, entanglement is not just a puzzle; it is a testable manifestation of timeless connectivity. If consciousness, like gravity, is nonlocal and omnipresent, then its presence may be detected not by what it emits, but by what it permits, the structure it allows, the coherence it preserves across distance.

Science does not always begin with observation. Sometimes, it begins with mystery. The Higgs boson was theorized before it was found. Disease was “known” before bacteria were visible. Similarly, if consciousness is a fundamental field, then its proof may come before its direct observation, in the form of effects that cannot otherwise be explained.

Entanglement may be one. So might the extreme fine-tuning of the universe, i.e., the precise balance of physical constants required for existence. The strength of gravity, the charge of the electron, the cosmological constant: all seem set with uncanny precision.

Change them ever so slightly, and stars don’t form, atoms don’t bind, or expansion tears everything apart. One interpretation is coincidence. Another is a multiverse. But a third possibility is intention,not in a religious sense, but as an expression of underlying coherence, a responsiveness akin to consciousness itself.

Consider complexity. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy—the measure of disorder—should always increase. And yet, here we are, billions of years in, witnessing galaxies, neurons, language, and symphonies.

Something resists the drift toward disorder. Not permanently, not magically, but locally, again and again. Life builds islands of increasing complexity. Could that, too, be an effect of consciousness interacting with matter?

To explore this, we must ask what features of a Consciousness Field might be observable. What would such a field do? Perhaps it connects. Perhaps it preserves relationships across time and space, exactly as entanglement does.

And perhaps it is the effect of observation itself. Without reaction, there are no measurements, no perceptions, no change. A universe without consciousness might be indistinguishable from no universe at all.

That raises unsettling questions. Why is proximity relevant for every force, except for entanglement?

Why is mass required for gravity, yet gravity acts across billions of miles, never completely ending? How can the Earth’s surface bend the fabric of space where it doesn’t even touch?

These are questions not just of physics, but of interpretation. Perhaps proximity, space, time, and even causality are constructs, not illusions in the shallow sense, but frameworks shaped by the conscious field itself.

In this view, consciousness is not in time, but gives time its flow. It is not in space. It is what allows distance to be perceived.

Consciousness might be the glue of the cosmos, not added to it, but constitutive of it. Gravity, entanglement, time, and thought could all be expressions of one unified thing.

IN SUMMARY

What is consciousness? We offer two options for consideration. One: consciousness is the reaction to stimuli, and since all things react, all things have some measure of consciousness.

It’s a solid measure, relying not on metaphysics but on simple measurement. It answers the often unanswered questions, “Is this conscious?” and “How conscious is this?”

But it does not address the mysteries of Relativity and quantum mechanics, nor unite the two.

The other option: consciousness is a universally pervasive field, immune to time and distance, that inhabits everything at different measures, akin to a Higgs-like field.

This option solves the mysteries of Relativity and quantum mechanics, and unites the two, but doesn’t answer “Is this conscious?” and “How conscious is this?”, especially relative to living creatures.

Perhaps that will come.

I should have mentioned that the two concepts — consciousness as a reaction and consciousness as a field are not mutually exclusive. It could be both a reaction and a field, thus measuring individual levels of consciousness while explaining quantum weirdness. Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell; MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell; https://www.academia.edu/

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