Consciousness 01

First...
To many, this will sound very new-age-y, but I assure you there is a lot of hard science behind it. Google, for example, Donald Hoffman and you'll find, among others, this video. Here, in this 2-hour video, he explains his view and that of some others on this subject and you will find that I am not alone researching this in a serious and scientific manner. Below you will find my conclusions which differ slightly from his. I think that Donald overlooks one small issue which I will try to put into words sometime and make a video or webpage on it.
I will take a deeper dive into "the why" in this page.

Artificial Consciousness
My work on artificial consciousness has been conducted for about 25 years in absolute media silence. I wanted to know all the possibilities first before I would disclose any part of it.
Then I found that the goal I had set was unattainable. A consciousness, whether artificial or natural, needs to create its own universe in order to exist. This universe will reflect the processes that constitute the consciousness in a material form, but also as thoughts and as emotions.
Time and space and everything in it is the result of a consciousness that perceives itself.

No Big Bang
We like to think that the universe was created in a Big Bang way back in (our) time. But think of this; suppose our consciousness was the result of a program running somewhere on a computer. Then all space and all time would have been created by a flick of the switch that started this program.

Only One
We like to think that our consciousness is ours and that there are many consciousnesses, one for each person, animal and perhaps plant? But this notion is incorrect in the light of the above as each consciousness would create its own universe. Thus everything in this universe needs to share the same consciousness.
Yet, I am not aware of things that you are aware of at this moment, so if we share the same consciousness, it must be either branched or otherwise compartmentalized. I'll get into that later.

The Four Elements
We do not live in one world, we live in 4 worlds simultaneously. There is a material world which everyone will immediately recognize, the perceived reality. Then there is a second world, the world of our thoughts, a third; a world of emotions, and finally, a fourth; a world of processes, the ultimate reality. These are the four elements of our existence, Earth, Air, Water and Fire, respectively.
Before diving deeper it is important to note that every element is a complete representation of the element above it. Thus Water is a complete representation of Fire, Air of Water and Earth of Air. Consequently, every element is a complete representation of each of the other elements.
Having said that, they are not the same. One process in Fire can be represented in a number of emotions in Water, and one emotion can be represented in a number of thoughts in Air and one thought can be represented in a number of physical objects in Earth.
Thus there can be hundreds of millions of objects in Earth that represent only one process in Fire.
The fact that, for example, all people look alike (compared to other animals, plants and minerals) is because we are all representations of the same set of processes. In the element of Fire, we are all one. That is, we are all physical manifestations of one set of processes in the element of Fire.

Gender
The elements have been assigned a gender, male or female depending on whether they "work" outwards or inwards resp. Also, there is an old pair (Fire and Water) that produces a young pair (Air and Earth).
Since ancient times the Sun has been seen as an image of the element Fire, the Moon as an image of Water, the sky as Air and the Earth (planet) as Earth (element). Life is created where Air works on Earth. This can be seen as all life that we know of lives where the sky touches the Earth. This is further exemplified by our breathing where the air has to enter our body (Earth) so to sustain life.
As our material world springs from the younger elements, it is obvious that we should look for their immediate representations outside of us while the old elements are somewhere inside of us.
Now, imagine a spherical surface in front of you and something working from this surface to the inside. It would then fill up that sphere and become a solid, ie Earth. Therefore the element Earth is considered female.
If, on the other hand, it would work outwards, we would perceive it as it would "come to us" but there is nothing there; the sphere is empty. This represents a thought, the element Air and it is therefore thought to be male.
The old elements start out inside of us. Fire is directed outwards, we can not see it (because it is inside of us) but we can see its effects. Thus Fire is a male element. Water is directed inwards and therefore we can not "see" our emotions but we do experience them. Water is female.
The element Fire works on Water to create the elements Air and Earth.
Air works on Earth for subsequent creations.

Fractals and horizontal repetition
Because of how the elements come into existence, every element contains a representation of all elements. And consequently, every one of these representations again contains a representation of all elements. Thus a fractal kind of repetition emerges.
Besides this fractal repetition, we also have a "horizontal repetition". As I said before one process in Fire can result in hundreds of millions of occurrences in Earth. The most obvious example is, as I mentioned 2 paragraphs up, my physical body (and that of billions of others).

How is this knowledge going to help us?
Knowing and understanding how this physical universe comes into existence will, of course, help us understand how it works and why. It can also lead us to new discoveries and help validate proposed theories.
It is this last thing that I would like to suggest concerning Maxwell's model of the ether.