/**
 * file: karbytes_23_august_2024.txt
 * type: plain-text
 * date: 23_AUGUST_2024
 * author: karbytes
 * license: PUBLIC_DOMAIN
 */

The following ideas are a follow-up to the ideas which are broached at the end of the previous journal entry...

Perhaps nature is nothing more than a disjointed collection of universes which lacks awareness of all universes within it simultaneously. 

As a corollary to the previous sentence,  perhaps consciousness is only a localized phenomenon rather than something which is more ubiquitous and unified. 

If the previous sentence is true, then it would be factually accurate to say that consciousness is an emergent property of "lower level" (i.e. relatively physical) phenomena such as electrochemical signal transmissions across some neural network rather than the other way around (i.e. where apparently physical phenomena such as neural networks are an emergent property of some fundamentally irreducible and ubiquitous "field" of consciousness).

Presently, I feel obliged (as a science-oriented person) to behave as though I believe that consciousness is a localized phenomenon which only information processing agents experience (and an information processing agent is some kind of physical or virtual computer which is comprised of a finite allocation of space, time, matter, and energy and whose composition takes the form of a particular arrangement of matter and energy within space and time which is capable of rendering, retaining, and altering information in a logically consistent and systematic way (rather than in a more disorderly and non-contained way)).

As a student of metaphysics and explorer of altered states of consciousness (using psychoactive drugs, brain-to-computer interfacing devices, and yogic practices), I find panpsychism (the proposition that consciousness is the most fundamental substrate underlying and permeating all reality) to be the most attractive ontological stance for me to adopt because it makes me feel that all things unconditionally belong where they are in reality and are all contained within and accounted for by the same ubiquitous "field" of consciousness (which some people refer to as God).