My belief about existence can be summarized by an ancient symbol, a circle, which is echoed in the shape of our planet, our Sun, our Moon, and of our constituent atoms, and the most powerful locomotive tool, the wheel. The circle is the only geometric shape in which every point on the border is equidistant to the center. I suppose I could go on if I knew more geometry.
The circle implies the cycle, which has no end and no beginning, and that is how I view my own existence and others and all things in the Universe, all of which is united into a whole rather than being separate and distinct. In reality, we and all things are one. The separation is an illusion suggested by our animal nature which has needs and desires and an ego. Inanimate objects such as rocks do not feel the separation from the one, because they do not feel at all nor think. They do not have an ego. When we become inanimate, we will be like rocks, like water, like air.
Illusions are not without benefits. It may be that certain illusions are helpful for life, for survival, for well-being and happiness. Otherwise, what purpose would illusion serve? To see ultimate reality without filters could be distressing or even impossible for the human mind, which only evolved to handle a narrow set of parameters on Earth. One does what one can, what one needs to do. To say that certain concepts are illusions is not to imply they are useless and should be discarded, but only to point out that we are laboring under misconceptions that may not be well-suited to all questions, all situations.
What is death? Death is destruction of the ego, of our individual identity. When the ego is gone, then we rejoin the one, then there is no separation at all. Dead people have become soil and served as nitrogen-fuel for new crops, which were eaten by new generations of animals such as us. One day, the Universe will die, but that is not an end, or at least I don't think so, because I believe that the cycle we observe in a small scale on our planet is repeated at the larger scale of the Universe, and that all things will be renewed.
I believe that just as many things in our environment can be abstracted into formulae, so can all things in the Universe, and that reality could be very much like an enormous mass of computer code. Every human being can be defined by a mass of code with many variables. Remember that code can account for randomness, uncertainty, reactivity and evolution and unpredictability. There is no limit to things that can be defined by code. I have explained this idea to people who do not program, and they do not accept the theory because they see computers as being very limited, while the world is complex. But if a computer can beat a human being at the complicated game of chess, and if code is what allows it to do so, then it is easy for a chessplayer and a computer programmer such as myself to imagine a more advanced type of code that defines and controls everything in the Universe as well as the Universe itself.
God is not necessary, because in the beginning was the word, and the word was made flesh (John 1:1). Code can code itself. Although I want to explain the reasons for code and understand why everything is and how it all works, I always reach a mental block of some kind. I am frustrated because I cannot explain further. My mind aches trying to think beyond these things. I do not think I am capable of understanding anymore than what I have written here or at least not yet. My mental powers are limited, while the Universe is complicated, so I have to be humble and remain content with just understanding a little bit about a few simple things. To understand more would require a bigger, faster brain.
Could I be mistaken in my ideas? Possibly, but I don't think I'm making any wild
leaps away from what we already know based upon scientific observations. Science has reduced many forces in nature to mathematical certainties and probabilities, so it seems reasonable to believe that it will continue to do so and that the code behind all things will gradually emerge as a result. I like to monitor the steady drip of scientific research, although it is disappointing to see results that are inconclusive, contradictory with earlier results, or based upon shaky premises. The human race advances slowly, step by step, but at least there is the sense of advancement in many areas, such as technology and most areas of knowledge.
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