A book by Justin Harnish
Meaning in the Multiverse
A wild ride through the latest science of physics and artificial intelligence and the wisdom traditions of meditation — to explore whether the cosmos, in all of its rich formulations, offers a meaningful and even loving inclination toward us.
We have been looking in all the wrong places to find a universal meaning for our lives. We have asked the question all wrong. Instead of searching for meaning in the heavens, we first need to ask: what sort of universe would allow for an all-natural universal meaning?
Meaning in the Multiverse explores new territory in metaphysics — the philosophy of what makes up the cosmos — using a consilience of disciplines: the philosophy of mind, advances in artificial intelligence, and modern physics. Woven together, they form a conjecture about the way things work. The computational cosmos — without the need for gods or supernatural creatures — turns out to be capable of giving us meaning.
The book takes the lens cap off and stares into what I take to be the true source of human meaning: the dynamic, many-worlds multiverse. It addresses the Hard Problem of Consciousness and the Heat Death of the universe alike, and it points toward a universal meaning that is moral, that helps our species survive the commotion of its existential threats — and that still offers a personal path to happiness in the ordinary, illuminated nature of non-dual awareness.
What the Book Argues
Three movements, from the question of meaning to the practice of living it.
It is process all the way down
At its most fundamental, reality is not a small variety of stuff, nor a packet of information, but the humble process whose instructions turn geometry into gravity and the interference of parallel experiences into consciousness.
The eyes of the world
Our ability to appreciate experience grants us the only perspective that can produce love and compassion. Entities with experience offer existence a story of itself — which makes us meaningful to the universe, not merely in it.
Aligning to a meaningful multiverse
Flow with existence; mindfulness of experience. Both arrive — in the most profound moments — at the same transcendent optimum. Meaning takes the shape of its container, and the practice is to keep examining it.
The here and now is the only place and time to experience existence.
— from Meaning in the Multiverse