To us observers, the universe is a place of random activity and outcomes. Regardless of our seeming ability, from our vantage point, to manipulate our environment and to control the outcomes of events and processes according to our whim, the overall entropy of our universe continues to increase. For us observers, the random attribute of reality plays itself out through the mechanism of time’s arrow. We, as observers, are forever unable to predict the actual outcomes of future events or states from present, known, conditions. We parse the outcomes of future events using probability. The outcome of every event in the unknown future becomes a matter of chance, and its actuality is revealed only in an observed ‘now’ moment. This ‘now’ moment, where reality becomes manifest, for us observers, is a strange animal; we can’t actually detect it, in itself, instead we must detect, or observe, some physical process in space during a state of change in time. When we have detected and measured said state change, we can define that moment as our elusive ‘now’, but it is ever out of our grasp.

As observers, we’ve also discovered that this observed ‘now’ moment is relative, based on various observers motions and speeds. This phenomenon plays itself out in the arena of ‘simultaneity’, which would appear to be as good a definition of a ‘now’ moment, to an observer, as any other; two or more events occurring at the same ‘now’ moment in space. But for two or more observers, this simultaneity of events only exists when these observers are stationary, with respect to one another, that is, their relative velocities and trajectories through space time are so perfect that each observer would appear as perfectly stationary with respect to the other, while the rest of the universe would appear to be in motion around them. So while these two (or more) observers could come to agreement on the simultaneous occurrence of an event, at a definable ‘now’ moment in space time, nothing else in the universe would concur. And yet it is this special, yet very relative, ‘now’ moment in space time upon which we experience, measure and judge the attributes of reality around us, especially the randomness of the universe itself. But is this randomness an actual fact of our universe? Einstein himself believed that “God does not play dice with the universe”.  Is it a lynchpin of reality, or is it the result of the restricted and subordinate vantage point of the observers condition and circumstances within that reality?

To explore this question let us imagine an astronaut who finds himself afloat in deep space. In this scenario there are no stars or any objects that emit light, or any other stimulus that might be detected by our astronaut. Outside of his spacesuit is the great, interminable darkness and vacuum of the universe. All is devoid of any external objects and sensory stimulus of any kind. Additionally, our astronaut is in a state as described by special relativity, that is, movement is in a linear trajectory of constant speed. Our astronaut could be moving at a large fraction of the speed of light, but he would be unable to discern any movement at all. As to what direction in space our astronaut is moving, this also will be unknowable to him. To our lonely and solitary observer in space, for all intents and purposes, he is stationary with respect to the universe around him. But our lonely observer does experience self awareness, his consciousness is intact. His beating heart can be felt in his chest. He can hear the whooshing of his blood surging past his eardrums. Smell, taste, even sight are all active and produce signals which afford our astronaut an experience of his situation. It may not be a pleasant experience, but the bio-sensory system is doing its job. Being alone and in a situation where there is no stimulus other than that produced from within the confines of his spacesuit, the astronaut can know absolutely nothing of the universe outside. The stimulus provided from within the spacesuit is all the astronaut can know about the universe around him. This experience will be rich with emotions, thoughts, urges, and memories. And while this experience, once again, may not be pleasant, it exemplifies the functioning of our astronaut’s bio-sensory system. But while our astronaut can know nothing about the universe outside of his spacesuit, one part of his experience alone remains sacrosanct and universal. It is the same here as it would be on a crowded city street, in a submarine or atop a high mountain. The same, in fact, in any milieu where the organism can survive. It is the experience of time’s passage, or, to be more exact, the experience of being, in a ‘now’ moment, through which time flows. For our astronaut, this ‘now’ moment is a real and constant attribute of his experience of reality, and exists both for him and for the universe outside of his spacesuit. The one piece of ‘knowledge’ he is absolutely sure of is that time is flowing everywhere in his unknowable universe. This is the lynchpin of our bio-sensory experience of life and reality. It is the invisible, yet utile, empty center of the hub, around which the wheel of our bio-sensory system revolves as it produces for us our experience of reality and ourselves.

In general, our experience of life and reality seems to be composed of actual ‘objects’, be they bio-sensory neuronal transmissions, our organs, the objects we interact with in our environment, etc. But this ‘now’ moment can not be ‘found’ anywhere, it is a ‘pure’ and abstract experience for the observer, definable only through reference to other objects and events. And yet it suffuses the universe, everywhere. Nothing can be, nothing can happen, no experience can be had, except through time’s passage.

Within our environment we are able to contain space, manipulate matter and energy, and through our observations, measure and parse all manner of phenomena, including ourselves. But we can not contain the flow of time nor can we pin down this elusive ‘now’ moment. We have seen, in TotIs that our experience of a so called ‘now’ moment is nothing of the sort. Everything about the bio-sensory loop conspires to keep the organism ever incapable of partaking of any actual ‘now’ moment. We’ve also seen that the actual attributes of the totIs universe are not constrained to follow the attributes of  our antIs universe, the universe that our bio-sensory experience of reality manufactures for us. Because we experience a ‘now’ moment with its consequent flow of time does not mean that in the reality of the totIs universe, a ‘now’ moment, like the one we experience, actually exists.

Let’s again visit our lonely astronaut, floating and lost in an immeasurable space. He remembers that he has a flashlight attached to his spacesuit. Taking it in hand, he turns it on and sends it flying off in an arbitrary direction from himself, but a direction where he has a visual contact with it. Suddenly the immediate space that is outside of his spacesuit has a real volume. He is even able to approximate the flashlight’s distance and speed from him based on past experience. But this new situation, of two objects in relative motion to each other, creates an interesting condition from an observers viewpoint. The ‘now’ moment that the astronaut experiences himself occupying exists in the past of the ‘now’ moment the flashlight finds itself occupying.

But here I must stress the fact that this is true from an ‘observers’ viewpoint only. The astronaut observes himself, as well as the flashlight, in space-time. He understands the rules of Relativity theory and the concept of reference frames in space-time that allow multiple observers to experience, agree and/or disagree on ‘simultaneity’. He projects on to the flashlight an observers status that places it on a separate reference frame in space-time and, presto, two reference frames, two ‘now’ moments and an inability to agree on an experience of simultaneity. The problem with this viewpoint is that the flashlight is NOT an observer. The flashlight is observed, by an observer, which is why it will comport with his observations. The astronaut, believing that his ‘now’ moment is both real and fundamental to the way the universe works, projects on to the flashlight, as well as everything else in the universe, an ‘observers’ status. The flashlight is no more of an observer than is an electron, a snowflake or a star, and the ‘now’ moment experienced by the astronaut, which isn’t a ‘now’ moment at all, is not experienced by the flashlight or any other inanimate matter or energy in the universe. The concept of matter or energy experiencing anything is meaningless. The astronaut observes and experiences a universe whose attributes are supplied to him by his bio-sensory system, and is what I call antIs reality. The astronaut never doubts that everything, in the rest of the universe, IS experiencing a universe with the  same attributes. It is not. The totIs universe, as source, IS NOT compelled to conform to the rules that appear to biological observers in the form of the antIs reality of that biology’s creation.

You may notice a similarity between this astronaut’s situation and the thought experiment known as the “brain in a jar” scenario. Without going into the details of this scenario, in summary, it is used to describe a philosophical tenet that proposes that conscious biological observers are essentially insulated from ‘external’ reality and can know nothing about the nature of such reality, relying as they do on their brains creation of their conscious experiences. The problem with the brain in a jar scenario is that the brain can not be separated from the body as it relates to the production of experiences of reality and life. The brain and body are not two separate things, they are one synergy, working as one being to produce such experiences. The central nervous system expands out to every part of the body and makes use of it all, while the body communicates vast amounts of information to the brain, not just external stimulus. The form of our antIs experience of reality relies as much on input from our spleen and stomach as it does on our sensory apparatus. Our astronaut scenario lets us recreate the brain in the jar scenario using the whole body to make the case for the actuality of our biologically created and illusory, antIs reality as opposed to the totIs reality that is the prime foundation of our universe. The important point to remember is that totIs reality IS NOT constrained to comport with the attributes we experience and believe to be real in our antIs experience of reality.

So is the randomness we experience a lynchpin of the reality of our universe? From an observers perspective, the ‘now’ moment, and consequent flow of time is an illusory manifestation of our antIs experience. In the totIs universe there is no ‘now’ moment nor flow of time, as we experience it. As such, and contrary to our experience of it, there is no ‘activity’ at all, random or otherwise. As conscious observers our existence is bound to the illusory antIs universe our biology creates for us. This dependence creates, for biology, an insurmountable obstacle; We can never experience the unity of the totIs universe because our very existence as observers insures that our experience of the universe is one that is composed of separate things that randomly change state through flowing time. Our antIs reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one, the veil of an illusory reality beyond which IS the ‘source’, or, totIs reality.