Dr Ing Vincenzo Calogero, PhD (calogerv@gmail.com)

I am a computer scientist (PhD and Senior Research Fellow at UCL, London, UK), and a professional with experience in the development of information systems for large organisations, often for government departments. I am now an independent consultant. I am interested in philosophy and consciousness, and in materialist and post-materialist sciences. I have worked on a theory of Values, resulting in the OVAX methodology (Opportunities, Values, Actions, eXperiences) that can be used for big and small decisions in our life. I am a believer in religion, and Christianity in particular, with the view that consciousness theories, sciences and religion are compatible and indeed strengthen each other.

THE MAP OF THE UNIVERSE

Dr Vincenzo Calogero (PhD), Copyright September 2024

(full article at: 

https://www.aapsglobal.com/student-magazine-consciousness-unexplained-pdf-donation/

If we go to a new town, we need a Map to find our way, to locate the places we want to visit. Even if we are not travelling and we live in a big city, we still need a Map to find unusual places.  In the spiritual context, we can use a Map of the Universe if we come up with questions like:

What is the purpose of our life on Earth? Where are we going in our life? Are we eternal after life on Earth? What is the meaning of Eternity? Do post-materialist sciences explain it? Are we a small dot in the Universe, or is the whole Universe inside us?

I present a tentative Map here: other scientists, religious leaders, and any of my readers may suggest modifications, or build their own different Maps, so that we may converge towards an agreed Map.

My Map does not give all the answers to the above questions, but it helps us put those questions in context, relate them to our consciousness. It is compatible with scientific and spiritual views, with experimental data, and also with religious beliefs. It combines the conventional concepts of materialism, physical universe, and history, with the post-materialist views that consider the world and eternity as part of our consciousness.

This Map is summarised by the Map Icon below, and fully explained by the Detailed Map.

The Map Icon

The Detailed Map

This is the full version of the Map of the Universe, with details that make it more "operational", we might say "Action oriented". It is fully explained by the English article published in the Magazine (No 1, 2023) of the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences:  

https://www.aapsglobal.com/student-magazine-consciousness-unexplained-pdf-donation/

This Map shows two blue areas, Eternity and the Higher Self, and two brown boxes, History and Universe. The brown boxes are timebound but also included in Eternity. All these elements are part of consciousness, and consciousness is eternal.

The main boxes of the Map are explained below.

ETERNITY: This can be defined in long philosophical dissertations but also in simple definitions, e.g. "a state of existence outside normal life", or "time that never ends, that has no limits". It can be imagined as a video-recording with past and future events that can we can access backwords and forward.

Higher SELF: This is my consciousness, my spirit and mind, my soul: they are eternal, at the origin of my perception of time, of my entry in human History and in the physical Universe. It is the feeling that I exist. This higher SELF, or consciousness, is shown as a blue (eternal) box in the Map.

Conventional materialism explains that the brain constructs the SELF as an image, a feeling, during the early months of a baby's life. Before that construction, the baby will suck his toes as if no different from baby's biscuits, no distinction between inside and outside reality.

On the contrary, post-materialism explains that in those early months the baby constructs his "receiver", a brain that is like a TV set that cannot create its movies and news, but receives them from a bigger "transmitter". It is the eternal consciousness that creates and transmits to the brain.

This "transmitter" is the blue box in the Map (SELF) that is connected to the brown boxes below it. The brown colour of the History and Universe boxes indicates the space and time dimensions, with my body and brain located within a specific life span shown by the vertical dotted lines.

The first brown box below the blue SELF box, is "my SELF in human History". The higher SELF also connects with the brown box at the bottom, i.e. my brain and body in the physical Universe. My timebound presence in History and in the physical Universe starts with My birth and finishes with my death. But that is only a change of clothes, because my consciousness does not end with physical death: I continue to exist as my eternal SELF, also in contact with others who are in Eternity.

The Bible has made these concepts accessible even to the peasants and shepherds of 2000 years ago. My proposed Map of the Universe is an effort to provide a simple representation of these concepts in modern terms.

HISTORY: The Map shows the brown box of human History, that contains my life span between the dotted lines. Before and after my life, this box contains the historic events, big and small, produced by the Actions (A) of individuals, communities, countries, guided by their Values (V), when responding to their Opportunities (O). During my life, my Values (V) guide my choice of Actions (A) using my Opportunities (O) and resulting in my personal experiences (X). This mechanism is shown as "OVAX" in the Map.

The History box shows a start millions of years ago, with the appearance of human beings on Earth. This is explained by science as the evolution of monkeys into humans, which is also described by the Biblical myth of Adam and Eve (A&E in the Map). Many religious believers see this as a time when a divine intervention introduced a soul, a human consciousness, a spirit, a SELF, into the developing monkeys. In consciousness theories, this is the start of human consciousness, derived from the eternal and universal consciousness.

This beginning of history is also explained by materialist theories, as a coincidence of factors: this is a way in which many extraordinary events are explained by science without reference to a divine creator or designer.

Albert Einstein said: Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. In the case of the human species, materialism suggests a coincidence of environmental factors that produced a tribe of monkeys that could feed on perfect food without struggles, that could raise their newborns with love and affection. This coincidence developed their brains in a super-way that made them evolve into humans, as opposed to other tribes of monkeys that continued their insecure animal life till present days.

My Map is compatible with any of these interpretations, as it simply positions them in the total Universe.

UNIVERSE: The Map shows the brown box (time bound) of the physical Universe: it contains my physical life span (started with My Birth, placed between the dotted lines) but is much wider, as it began with the Big Bang billions of years before human History and before the myth of Adam and Eve. It ends, together with History, at the End of Times, which is mentioned several times in the Bible.

This box contains all the natural phenomena that produced the big galaxies and the small orchids! During my life, it represents my physical brain and body that can interact with my physical and social environment. Hopefully, my "Ecology Value" can be high and make me protect the environment.

The Big Bang theory is part of the materialist sciences. By observing the expanding Universe today, we can estimate when it all started with a Big Bang. Before that, science says there was nothing, no space, no time.

With post-materialism and consciousness theories, we envisage a creation of the Universe that originates from the timeless consciousness of the cosmos, i.e. from Eternity. Religious traditions describe this as the creation of the World by the Source, the Creator, or God. If you ask the question "When", the Big Bang gives you the scientific answer. If you ask the question "Why", the answer can only be spiritual, and it is often given as "God's love".

A view that is compatible with religion and sciences, and modern conscious-ness theories, is that God or the universal consciousness created the laws of evolution, that have taken the Universe from the Big Bang to what we can observe today. Different believers may have different interpretations, but they do not change the simple boxes of my Map.

Others: These are shown in the Map as big round dots. They include our friends and relatives who are alive in our lifetime (the red dots in the Map). Some of our contemporaries die before us, and the theory of consciousness explains how sometimes we may communicate with them (After Death communication, ADC). They are shown as blue dots in the Map, as they are in Eternity.

These blue dots of others, and our ability to communicate with them, cover several cases: we can communicate with Others while still alive, but in different spaces and times. This is proven by several psychic phenomena that have been studied scientifically in post-materialist sciences. They include premonition presentiments, telepathy...

Other cases may cover our communication with Others from long past, or in the far future, all equally present in Eternity. This may include saints and prophets of religious traditions, and Jesus Christ, with whom believers can communicate with various kinds of prayers.

Communication with others in the future can reveal to us events that are not known yet, but they are written in the timeless book of Eternity. This communication has been proven scientifically, by studying messages from the deceased to the participants in the experiment, that have revealed information on past or future events, that could not have been previously known by the participants.

CONCLUSIONS

This Map of the Universe is a framework for you, the Reader, to add your own knowledge and views, to make changes that reflect what you have learned in other studies, essentially your beliefs and interpretations of the world.

Scientists can use it to summarise their theories and empirical findings, in order to make them more easily understood and more relevant to spiritual and practical life.

Spiritual leaders can add their teachings and advice to the Maps.

Those who disagree with some of the concepts presented in this article, will find in the Map the exact locations for displaying their disagreements.

But the users of the Map do not need to be scientists or leaders. Most of them can also be present or former students, still interested in the theories they have learned, or professional and intellectuals seeking to reassess their post-materialist worldview. They can gain here a better understanding of consciousness, to help them in their search for the purpose and meaning of life.