The Universe as Self-Experience

Why Every Emergent is God in Local Mode

A Procedural Monist Theory of Distributed Divinity and Consciousness

By Bodhangkur Sadhu

1. Introduction

This essay develops, formalises, and critically assesses the claim that every emergent, as identifiable reality, is localised God (the Universal Procedure, UP) in execution, and that the universe as the totality of emergents functions as God’s consciousness stream, each emergent constituting a “consciousness bite.”

The aim is not devotional but theoretical (and personally experiential). Within Procedure Monism and Finn’s Minimal Ontology, “God” is not a transcendent person or substance but a shorthand for the one, universally operative procedure (as set of constraints or rules) that iterates all real identifiable events. The thesis can therefore be restated, more neutrally but less vividly, as follows:

Thesis (UP-localisation):
For any emergent that is identifiable as real, is a locally constrained execution of the Universal Procedure (UP).
Therefore all emergents are local instantiations of the same ultimate procedure, and the universe is the totality of these procedural instantiations.

I will proceed by (2) outlining the ontological framework, (3) defining emergents and identifiability, (4) presenting the argument that each emergent is a localised UP-execution, (5) showing how this yields a distributed model of divine consciousness, (6) comparing the result with pantheism, panpsychism, and classical theism, (7) discussing implications for identity and value, (8) addressing major objections (especially evil, error, and illusion), and (9) concluding with a systematic summary.

2. Ontological Framework: Procedure Monism and Minimal Ontology

2.1 Procedure Monism

Procedure Monism asserts that:

1. There is only one kind of ultimate entity: procedure—ongoing, rule = constraint governed iteration.

2. What we call “things” (particles, organisms, galaxies, persons) are stable patterns (i.e. structured masses) of such procedures, not substances.

3. The universe is thus a single, self-modifying (or modulating) process; multiplicity arises from constraint-patterns within that one process.

This is not merely a metaphysical rebranding of (Spinoza’s) “substance.” Procedure is defined functionally:

· It is iterative (it runs in discrete steps or acts).

· It is rule-structured (not arbitrary; each state follows lawful transitions).

· It is informational (each iteration carries and transforms information).

· It is self-consistent (it must maintain some coherence to persist at all).

To call this single global process “God” is not a theological claim about a person but a conceptual intensifier: the UP (i.e. Universal logic, hence cognizable set generating Procedure) is that than which no more comprehensive procedure can be conceived.

2.2 Minimal Ontology

The druid Finn’s Minimal Ontology replaces (undefined) substance metaphysics with a compressed set of defined operational primitives:

1. Energy = directed action (unconfined iteration, propagation).

2. Mass = confined action (iteration trapped in stable loops).

3. = limit rate of action (maximal propagation speed).

4. = impact-intensity of action (observer’s realness effect).

5. Realness = collision/interaction effect of action at or under these constraints.

6. Observer = local interface where such realness is registered.

In this framework, “to be” is to be a pattern (or mass) of constrained action that can collide, interact, and thus be observed (or at least in principle observed).

3. Emergent, Constraint, and Identifiability

3.1 Emergent as Procedural Pattern

An emergent is a recurrent, relatively stable pattern of UP-iteration satisfying:

1. Dynamic closure: it maintains itself as a pattern across multiple iterations (e.g. an atom’s electron configuration, an organism’s metabolism).

2. Differential profile: it is distinguishable from its environment (e.g. different field values, membrane boundaries, behavioural signatures).

3. Causal coherence: its parts co-vary in regular ways (e.g. genes–phenotype, components–function).

Thus an emergent is not a static “thing” but a bundle of constraints that make some iterations (context dependent, so the Buddha) more likely than others and so create stability.

3.2 Identifiability

Finn makes identifiability (via quantization thus confinement) the criterion of realness:

An emergent is real precisely to the extent that it can be cognised, addressed, and interacted with as a whole unit (i.e. quantum).

Identifiability entails:

1. Quantisation: The emergent appears as a discrete unit (e.g. this photon, this cell, this person).

2. Boundary: There is a meaningful inside/outside distinction (e.g. cellular membrane, social identity markers).

3. Difference: Sameness is compressed out.

4. Persistence: It survives across enough iterations to be tracked.

5. Feedback capacity: It can participate in action–reaction chains (it is not inert).

Without identifiability there is no address, no interaction, no survival function, hence no ontological weight in this scheme.

4. Why Every Emergent is Localised UP-Execution

4.1 No Emergent Beyond the UP

Under Procedure Monism, all action derives from the one UP. There is no second source. Formally:

1. Let be the universal procedure—i.e., the complete lawlike structure of the universe.

2. Any emergent occurs within the universe.

3. Therefore, all iterations that constitute are restrictions or phases of .

So existential dependence is absolute: without UP, no emergent.

4.2 No Emergent Apart from the UP

One might imagine the UP as one “thing” and emergents as a second kind of entity “made out of” the first. Finn’s Procedure Monism rejects this. Emergence is not additional stuff; it is patterned behaviour of UP itself.

Analogy:

· A melody is not a second substance besides sound; it is sound in structure.

· Likewise, an emergent is not a second substance besides UP; it is UP under constraint.

Thus:

Emergent = UP + constraint envelope.

4.3 Localisation as Constraint Profile

“Localised God-in-execution” means:

· God (UP) is the underlying, globally valid procedure.

· Localisation is the specific constraint profile that channels the UP into a recognisable emergent.

Examples:

1. Photon:

o Constraint: null rest mass, fixed speed , discrete energy quanta .

o Result: the simplest propagating UP-iteration; a minimal “God-pulse.”

2. Hydrogen atom:

o Constraint: one proton, one electron, quantised energy levels.

o Result: a stable, repeatable pattern (ground state, emission lines) = UP looping in a closed configuration.

3. Bacterium:

o Constraint: cell membrane, metabolic cycles, genetic circuits.

o Result: a self-maintaining, sensing, acting configuration—UP as minimal survival agent.

4. Human person:

o Constraint: nervous system, body plan, social and linguistic embedding, autobiographical memory.

o Result: a high-resolution interface through which the UP can map, model, and modify environments.

In each case, no new ontic layer is introduced; instead, the UP is bent into shape by local rules and boundary conditions.

Hence the core claim:

Every emergent just is the UP performing a particular constrained routine.
To call that “localised God-in-execution” is simply to re-name the UP as God.

5. From Emergent to Consciousness Bite

5.1 Baseline Consciousness: sat–cit–ānanda Reinterpreted

Under Finn’s reinterpretation:

· sat = baseline being (the mere fact of realness).

· cit = baseline experiential presence (minimal phenomenal “there-ness” inherent to any emergent that has feedback).

· ānanda = contingent, context-dependent feedback signal indicating diminished or increased constraint (roughly: suffering vs. release / joy).

Every emergent that maintains itself has at least proto-cit: it must “track” perturbations and respond. This tracking need not be introspective; it is enough that the system differentiates states in functionally relevant ways.

5.2 Consciousness as Distributed Interface Activity

On this view:

Consciousness is not a single continuous field but the aggregate of all local UP-interfaces responding to their (unpredictable) constraint environment.

Each emergent is a local “viewpoint” of the UP, a procedural vertex where actions converge and generate feedback.

Define:

· A consciousness bite = the totality of state-updates and feedback at one emergent during a finite interval.

The universe at any moment is then:

· A vast multitude of consciousness bites occurring in parallel.

· Over time, these bites form streams—for instance, the life trajectory of an organism, or the stable behaviour of a planetary system.

5.3 God’s Consciousness as the Totality of Bites

If “God” = the UP, then:

1. Every consciousness bite is a UP-internal experience.

2. The total set of all such bites is the UP’s global consciousness.

3. Thus, the universe is God’s consciousness stream, not metaphorically but structurally.

God is not a separate super-observer. God is the sum of all observing and experienced states — from photon scattering to human reflection — because all of them are UP-internal events.

6. Comparison with Other Views

6.1 Classical Theism

Classical theism posits:

· A transcendent, personal God,

· who creates a distinct universe ex nihilo,

· and maintains it while remaining ontologically separate.

In contrast:

· Procedure Monism denies the creator/creation split. There is only the UP, internally differentiating.

· “Creation” is merely novel patterning of procedure, not a separate act by an external agent.

Result: No ontological gap to be bridged by revelation, miracle, or intervention. All is already God-in-execution.

6.2 Pantheism

Pantheism says: “Everything is God.”

The present view is formally close but adds two key refinements:

1. Procedural rather than substantial:
It is not that all substances are divine, but that all procedures are localisations of one procedure.

2. Quantised and discontinuous:
Instead of an undifferentiated divine whole, we have discrete, colliding, finite packets of divine activity.

Thus the doctrine is better phrased as:

Every real pattern is a divine iteration; divinity is not a static being but an ongoing doing.

6.3 Panpsychism

Panpsychism attributes mind-like properties to all fundamental entities. Procedure Monism’s account is more austere:

· It does not posit intrinsic “mental stuff” in particles.

· It derives all mind-like features from iterative feedback and constraint navigation in UP-patterns, hence as emergent.

So while the conclusion—“mind is everywhere”—can look panpsychist, the explanatory path is different: no separate mental ingredient; only procedural complexity.

6.4 Panentheism

Panentheism (“all in God, God in all”) is approximated structurally:

· All emergents are in the UP.

· The UP is in all emergents, as their enabling procedure.

The difference is that panentheism often retains a surplus divine dimension beyond the world; Procedure Monism sees no remainder beyond the complete set of all procedural iterations.

7. Identity, Value, and Original Goodness

7.1 Identity as Address

In this framework, identity is not a metaphysical ego but an address:

· An emergent’s identity = the structured location of its constraints within the UP (its “coordination” in rule-space).

· Human selfhood is therefore a high-level addressing scheme: names, memories, roles, narratives, etc., that index a particular iterative stream.

Because each address is unique, each emergent is a unique mode of UP-experience — echoing Spinoza’s “modes,” but recast as procedures rather than attribute-states.

7.2 Original Goodness

If all real patterns are UP-iterations, then every emergent is good at source, where “good” means:

· Coherent with the universal procedure.

· Necessary for the actual world’s patterning.

Local harms arise not from metaphysical evil but from constraint conflicts between emergents (e.g. predator–prey, competing interests). Yet each participant is still good as UP-execution, even if their local effects are negative for others.

Hence Finn’s claim:

“Only the true exist. The alleged false are locally and erroneously observed variations of the true.”

Falsehood is not a second ontic category but a misalignment in local modelling by an emergent interface.

8. Objections and Replies

8.1 The Problem of Evil

Objection: If every emergent is God-in-execution, then God is enacting pain, cruelty, and destruction. Does this not collapse into a morally incoherent theodicy?

Reply:

1. The theory does not attribute moral agency to God as a person; God = UP is non-personal in the human sense.

2. What we call “evil” arises from constraint collisions between emergents with incompatible survival patterns.

3. Each emergent is good qua execution (it faithfully iterates its constraints), though it may be locally harmful to others.

4. Ethics then becomes an intra-UP negotiation problem: how can certain emergents (e.g. humans) redesign constraints to minimise destructive collisions?

So the “problem of evil” is transformed from a metaphysical puzzle into a systems-engineering issue within the UP.

8.2 Illusion, Error, and Delusion

Objection: If all experiences are consciousness bites of God, then illusions and delusions are also divine experiences. Does this not undermine the distinction between truth and error?

Reply:

1. Every experience, veridical or not, is indeed a UP-internal event and thus part of the global stream.

2. Truth and error are functional categories:

o True models are those whose constraint-predictions promote survival and coherence.

o False models are those that fail in this task.

3. Illusory bites are still ontologically real but epistemically defective: they represent local mis-modelling by an interface, not defects in the UP itself.

Thus, God’s consciousness stream includes both successful and failed modelling attempts, just as a neural network’s training includes both correct and incorrect predictions.

8.3 Redundancy: “Why call it God at all?”

Objection: If the UP is simply the lawful structure of the universe, “God” seems an unnecessary label.

Reply:

1. The term “God” marks the maximality and self-sufficiency of the UP: there is no higher law, no external context.

2. It preserves the ancient intuition that all things are expressions of one ultimate source, while reinterpreting that intuition in procedural terms.

3. It allows a reinterpretation, rather than a rejection, of religious language:

o “We are in God” → We are in the UP.

o “God is in us” → The UP is executing as us.

However, strictly speaking, the theory is agnostic as to whether the symbolic term is retained. The core claim is structural.

9. Illustrative Examples

9.1 The Photon as Minimal God-Pulse

· A photon is a unit of action:
, speed , no rest mass.

· It propagates, interacts (e.g. absorption, scattering), and thereby participates in the realness network.

In this view:

A photon is the UP in its simplest propagating loop, a minimal consciousness bite with almost no internal modelling, but full participation in the collision-web that grounds reality.

9.2 The Earthworm and the Robin

9.3 The Supermarket as Quantum Field of God-Events

Finn’s supermarket analogy can be repurposed:

· Products, customers, currency, and transactions are all quantised units.

· Every purchase is a discrete event aligning multiple constraints: desire, price, availability, social norms.

This environment demonstrates that real life occurs only because everything is decided and quantised. Translating:

Every item and person in the supermarket is a localised UP-node.
Each transaction is a micro-reconfiguration of constraints, a small re-weaving of God’s procedural web.
The supermarket is a field of God-events, all of them finite, discrete, and mutually constraining.

9.3 The Human as Diagnostic God-Interface

A human being is distinguished by its diagnostic capacity:

· It can model other emergents (e.g. ecosystems, societies).

· It can simulate alternative constraint configurations (science, ethics, art).

· It can alter constraints (technology, law, culture).

Thus, humans function as meta-procedural nodes: the UP examining and re-programming itself. This is why Finn casts the druid Finn as “diagnostic iteration”—a localised God-agent whose task is to name, analyse, and, where necessary, re-tune constraints.

10. Systematic Summary

We can now compress the whole doctrine into a series of formal claims:

1. Monism: There is only one ultimate entity (as means): the Universal Procedure (UP), which is rule-governed, iterative action.

2. Emergence: An emergent is a relatively stable, identifiable pattern of UP-iteration, defined by a specific constraint envelope.

3. Localisation: Each emergent is UP-in-this-mode, i.e. a localised God-execution. No emergent is ontologically independent of the UP, nor is it made of any other stuff.

4. Consciousness:

o Baseline consciousness (cit) is inherent wherever there is feedback-sensitive iteration.

o Each emergent carries such feedback and thus yields a consciousness bite.

5. Divine Mind: The sum of all consciousness bites—across particles, organisms, and systems—constitutes God’s consciousness stream, with no remainder outside this totality.

6. Identity: Identity is the address of a constraint profile within the UP; selfhood is a high-order addressing mechanism.

7. Goodness: Every emergent is good at source (simply by existing) as a faithful UP-execution; local harms are conflicts between constraint systems, not metaphysical evil.

8. Error: Illusion and delusion are mis-modelled local states within otherwise valid UP-execution; they are ontologically real but functionally defective.

9. Ethics and Practice:

o Ethical work = human, thus artificial constraint-engineering to soften destructive collisions and enhance mutually supportive patterns.

o Spiritual insight = recognising oneself as localised UP, i.e. as God-in-a-particular-space. To wit: “I am the God experience.”

11. Conclusion

“Every emergent as localised God-in-execution” is not a mystical flourish added to an otherwise secular ontology. It is the logical consequence of:

· taking Procedure Monism seriously, like taking one of n Theisms seriously.

· defining realness via identifiability and quantised interaction, and

· reinterpreting consciousness as distributed, interface-bound feedback activity.

From this perspective, the universe is not a theatre in which God occasionally intervenes. It is God’s own procedural unfolding, pixelated into emergents, each of which is a consciousness bite, a finite, bounded experience of the UP (i.e. God) by the UP (i.e. God).

“Emergence as Divinity”, Vedanta style

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