Consciousness is quantum

Consciousness is quantum. Experience is fractal.

Consciousness may be expressed as shifts between integral dimensions (1,2,3,4,5,6…) Thus it lends itself to talking about in terms of states in the same way as we talk about states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, plasma. Consciousness has the property of resolving into a discrete categories of functioning and can take the identity of individual modules of consciousness (my consciousness, your consciousness, his consciousness, her conscoiusness). Individual means undivided: i.e., integral.

The fundamental property of “having” consciousness is that it one is alone in that self-contained field. The root of who we are is consciousness itself in its quantum state. However, when experiences begin to accrete to our identity, in the random and fractional quality of real numbers (3.14, 9.86, etc.), we adhere to the infinitely varied fractal patterns that occur in our individual lives. And the stories we tell about our lives often develop into infinite real number sequences: 3.14159265…, 9.86965056… and so on. These stories are not individual in the sense of integral consciousness states. Like fractals, their forms are extraordinarily complex and may seem random and chaotic on the surface. Chaos mathematics might restore some sense of underlying orderliness to the fabric of these stories, but essentially we are dealing with fractional dimensions when we enter the world of experience.

Nonfractal objects are things like lines, rectangles, cubes. We don’t experience life this way unless we abstract out these objects. The fractal object expresses life as we meet it: a constantly shifting, unpredictable, seemingly random territory inhabited by a multiplicity of selves (the components of psychological subjective reality).

When we ask who we are, we can only temporarily alight in the quantum. Quantum, nonfractal states do not appear to occur naturally. Those quantum integers are quickly grabbed by free-floating fractal functions and appropriated as coefficients to produce the infinite textures of our lives.