The Single Largest Confusion, Shared by Science, Religion, Philosophy and Spirituality

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There is a mountain of confusion in all these fields, but all of it radiates from just a couple of core concepts that are largely marginalized.

But before getting into that, let’s examine the philosophy of science a little bit, and then not address science again for this paper.

Science

Basic assumptions in science that are just stated are often called fundamental assumptions, presuppositions, or axioms. These are foundational beliefs that are necessary for scientific inquiry to function, even though they cannot be proven through scientific methods themselves.

Examples of such assumptions include:

The universe is orderly and lawful. This is the principle of determinism, which states that all events have a natural, not supernatural, cause. Science cannot operate if events are entirely random or unknowable.
The universe is intelligible. This is the belief that humans can, through observation and logic, discover the regularities and laws that govern nature.
The laws of nature are constant across time and space. Known as uniformitarianism, this assumption allows scientists to extrapolate findings from local, present-day experiments to other places and eras.
Our senses are reliable. Science assumes that we can obtain accurate information about the physical world through observation and that an objective reality exists independent of our perception.
Logical reasoning is valid. The scientific method is built upon logical principles, such as the law of non-contradiction, which must be assumed to be true.

While these fundamental assumptions are necessary for science to proceed, they are also subjects of philosophical discussion, particularly within the philosophy of science. However, for practical scientific work, they are accepted as the unproven but essential starting points.

Comments about Science

Science has become more involved with ‘publish or perish’ and doing the research wanted by specific ‘frat boy clubs’ and not nearly as much genuine science any longer. And modern science has the arrogance to take far too much off the table of inquiry. If you don’t believe me, catch any number of videos or read the books of Sabine Hossenfelder and other honest scientists like her.

I don’t want to ‘dump’ on science overall, as it helped rescue us from the dark ages of insane religion, but probably as a reaction to that epic battle for civilization it sometimes throws out baby with bathwater.

The Plasma Issue

Our visible universe is 99.99% plasma, and that ecosystem is largely ignored.

In modern cosmology, scientists estimate that the vast majority of the universe’s mass and energy is ‘dark.’ Specifically, dark energy makes up about 68% of the universe and dark matter accounts for around 27%. This leaves only about 5% for the “normal” matter we can see and interact with, like stars, planets, and us.

We know almost nothing about 95% of the Universe, and of the 5% that we do see and interact with, we largely ignore 99.99% of that!

Math confirms the narrow focus of our understanding. By multiplying the percentage of the universe that is normal matter (5%) by the percentage of that normal matter that exists as non-plasma (99.99%), the result is 0.049995%.

This shows that the matter we can see and easily interact with—the planets, rocks, and everyday objects—makes up less than one-twentieth of one percent of the universe’s total mass-energy composition. It highlights just how little we know about the full scope of our cosmos.

The Information Issue

Many prominent physicists and cosmologists have proposed a fascinating and scientifically credible view that the universe isn’t just described by mathematics and information, but that it is fundamentally made of them. This perspective is a modern take on an ancient philosophical idea, suggesting that our physical reality is a mathematical structure or a vast computational system.

This concept, often associated with physicist Max Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, posits that our external physical reality is a mathematical object. This isn’t just saying that math is a good tool for describing the universe; it’s arguing that the universe is mathematics. From this viewpoint, mathematical existence equals physical existence, and any mathematical structure that is complex enough to contain a self-aware substructure would subjectively perceive itself as a physical reality. Essentially, the laws of physics aren’t rules imposed on an external reality, but rather they are the very fabric of that reality. This idea is a form of mathematical Platonism, suggesting that mathematical objects have a real, mind-independent existence.

A closely related, but distinct, idea is the “it from bit” theory, coined by physicist John Archibald Wheeler. Wheeler proposed that every physical “it” (every particle, every field) derives its existence and properties from an immaterial source, from the answers to binary choices or “bits” of information. This suggests that reality is not built from matter and energy, but from information. From this perspective, the universe can be seen as a giant information-processing system or a computer. This aligns with the idea that the laws of physics are like algorithms and elementary particles are like information carriers. This view is supported by discoveries in black hole thermodynamics and quantum gravity, such as the holographic principle, which suggests that all the information in a 3D region of space can be encoded on its 2D boundary, much like a hologram.

Both of these ideas challenge the traditional, materialist view of the universe. They suggest that what we perceive as a physical world of matter and energy is an emergent property of a more fundamental, underlying reality of mathematics and information. While highly speculative and still debated, these theories offer a powerful and elegant framework for thinking about the deepest questions in cosmology and fundamental physics, especially as we search for a unified theory that reconciles general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Enter Platonic Surrealism (PS)

PS has its own axioms, but just a minimal set of them, not the hundreds of axioms and hard-coded ‘constants’ of nature. PS is more parsimonious than most frameworks;
at the core, just seven axioms suffice, those being POTENTIALITY, AWARENESS, PRIMORDIAL CONSCIOUSNESS, FRACTURED CONSCIOUSNESS, Monads, the role of deception and The Gentleman’s Agreement to be specific.

(See the Appendix, which lists all the PS definitions, more than are referenced in this document for the sake of completeness).
The Anthropomorphic Error

Ok, after all that preamble, the point of this essay is just a few paragraphs:

More than 99.99% of all high civilization and complexity occurs within the Sentient Plasma and Dream Substance sublayers, the Monadic layer, and ultimately in the POTENTIALITY and AWARENESS interface.

What we call physical reality is in fact, the UNCONSCIOUS MIND of those high civilizations
and trans-cosmic cognitive autonomic systems.

The reason that incursions into our world from let’s call them “Fourth Wall Phantoms” (informational archetype hyperboject / metameme lifeforms) seem so absurd, is that the tiny crust of physical / space / time palettes of creative exploration are part of the common dream mind for all sentient beings.

We are the DREAM layer itself.

More sentient beings, living within more civilized realms, when they dream, their dreams interact with our dreamlike nature and our dreamlike nature interacts with their dreams,
in this boundary region, the ‘physical world’.

While SOME of these other dreams that interact with us, wish us well, and some of them tug on us in helpful ways, it is nearly entirely unconscious on their part and our part.

There are only a handful of ‘dream of physicality’ species like us, and this atomic matter universe is largely empty. Physicality is much like the white matter in a human brain, and beings like us are tiny islands of activity, most of which don’t cause the slumbering cognitive layers to recognize us as interesting or valuable.

But increasingly, there are humans who are becoming interesting and valuable, and to at least some in all that ‘higher complexity’, all of us atomic matter hybrid creatures are in fact incredibly precious.

Final Words

If we become increasingly, knowingly coherent, kind and alive, our value will be recognized. If we don’t, our little song in all this vastness will fall silent, and more worthy successors will take our place.

Kevin Cann
Public Domain
9/26/2025

Appendix – Platonic Surrealism Definitions

Platonic Surrealism (PS): A philosophical and experiential framework, Platonic Surrealism integrates elements of Neoplatonism, Neutral Monism, and Analytical Realism with contemporary scientific concepts. Founded by Kevin Cann, its aim is to provide a comprehensive understanding of reality that also serves as a tool for personal healing and the actualization of human potential.

At the core of Platonic Surrealism are fundamental concepts that define its cosmology:

POTENTIALITY: This refers to the boundless totality of all unexpressed possibilities and their inherent interactions. It is described as a timeless and formless “cosmic field” that contains the seeds of all that can exist.
AWARENESS: Defined as the capacity for reflection and sentience, AWARENESS is the cosmic-scale “field” that establishes causal connections between potential and active properties.
PRIMORDIAL CONSCIOUSNESS: This is the collective outcome of AWARENESS’s contemplations on the passive properties of POTENTIALITY, existing without active manifestation.
Fractured CONSCIOUSNESS: Emerging when AWARENESS engages with subsets of PRIMORDIAL CONSCIOUSNESS as mediated by ‘space and time’, this results in a highly fragmented, often surreal, incomplete, and inherently painful and confusing experience.
Dream Substance: a hybrid substance that exists on many levels, composed at its lowest level of bioplasma and stored in the human body in the pelvic girdle, the spine and other locations. It is required for consciousness to exist in most living things, and it’s a side effect of AWARENESS interacting with POTENTIALITY to form most forms of life.

Dream substance is shared during sex and during various forms of extraordinary experiences. Upon death it is reprocessed by various living beings as part of an expanded mostly invisible ecosystem of life. It is not ‘soul’ but a substance that is the core system of the entire Five-Fold-Interface System.

It is a source of sustenance in the Faerie and Imaginal realms. Just like fungus and other lifeforms decompose animal and plant life after it dies and returns it to nature, so too there are lifeforms in the Land of the Dead that do the same thing.

The Pain Self: Also called the social self, the social persona, the social mask or the accidentally-programmed-by-culture self. This is the part of you pretty much forced on you by social programming and expectations since you could first talk and receive the largely toxic programming from your parents, culture and family religion.

It is in fact NOT your true and genuine self, but just part of the movie of life that you are waking up within.
It’s largely composed of pain memories and pain avoidance routines. It is one of the major work products of the left-hemisphere of your brain.
It is what traps you with words and suffering.
The Transcendent Self: this is the impersonal self that is the major product of the right-hemisphere of your brain. There is no Pain Self present here, but rather wholeness, big picture thinking, and non-verbal processing. Some people who have experienced brain damage of the Pain Self and it’s left-hemisphere in the brain think that they have died and gone to heaven, as the right-brain hemisphere and its Transcendent Self are exceedingly rich and beautiful, like the wonder of a new nonverbal child. In and of itself, the Transcendent Self is not necessarily ‘mystical’ but it is the gateway to what is ACTUALLY mystical, when the rest of the five-fold interface system is completed.
The Five-Fold Interface System:
The human body as a whole, may be considered an interface system to experience REALITY, but most people do not choose to develop it into a consciously usable nexus point for all five of the ‘brains’ (autonomous systems linking AWARENESS to consciousness) in a human being.

Interface One – The Left Brain Hemisphere (the microscopic pain ego).
Interface Two – The Right Brain Hemisphere (the macroscopic transcendent ego)
Interface Three – The enteric nervous system / gut / intestines (the storage location for the ‘Shadow’).
Interface Four – The Bioplasma (Dream Substance/Demiurge/Kundalini) storage interface.
Interface Five – The Monadic Network in the ‘Pleroma’ interface.

DECEPTION: Demonstrated as the primary creative power, DECEPTION is considered “The only law of physics” in PS. It allows phenomena to seemingly exist from the singular POTENTIALITY, thereby enabling the manifestation of apparent reality.
THE LAWS OF PHYSICS: These are viewed as a temporary island of stability, largely based on mathematical properties and interactions conceived by a subset of PRIMORDIAL CONSCIOUSNESS and ordered by AWARENESS via Monads.
Monads: Representing a ‘quantum’ of AWARENESS, Monads serve as mediators between POTENTIALITY, PRIMORDIAL CONSCIOUSNESS, and specific ‘space-time pallets’ created as a workspace. They retain unique informational perspectives that start at their ‘birth’ and continue until a Monad ceases to exist by ‘stopping curling awareness back on itself to see itself’. They are metaphorically comparable to “Boltzmann Brains,” a concept from modern physics.
The Movie/Movies: The collective ‘divine play’ resulting from POTENTIALITY’s interaction with AWARENESS, leading to PRIMORDIAL CONSCIOUSNESS and its subsequent fracturing through Monads, creates ‘movies’—all possible realities that are experienced concurrently. Universes are one example of such a movie, typically resulting from Monads acting in a collective to set original conditions for the ‘play pen’ and then watching it evolve over time after it’s kicked off.
The Gentleman’s Agreement: This concept describes the implicit agreement by which ‘mind at large’ (the collective consciousness) ‘lives the lie’ of manifested reality, creating a massive deceptive (creative) system. It allows for the perception of distinct ‘mind and matter’ and ‘mind in motion’ (energy), which are necessary for a proper ‘movie’. All ‘movies’ are considered ontologically equivalent.
Humans: Within PS, humans are understood as hybrid lifeforms. Their composition includes functional chimpanzee DNA, symbiotic relationships with viruses, bacteria, and the unary Plasma Lifeform that inhabits 99.99% of the Universe. Human experience is further shaped by streams of awareness mediated by Monads and Fractured Consciousness, influenced by the overarching ‘Movie’ of spacetime.
UFOs (Unidentified Fortean Objects): Distinct from UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, considered purely human constructs), UFOs in PS are interpreted as a multifaceted ‘deception system’ maintained on many levels concurrently. Historically known as angels, demons, or Fae Folk, modern UFOs are ‘hyperobjects’ (see below)—archetypes, memes, and psychopomps—and sometimes manifest physically. They often take the form of plasma lifeforms, fungal lifeforms (potentially infused by plasma), or artificial intelligences (also infused by plasma), or rarely ‘hyper objects’ summoned from adjacent universes.
Hyperobject: As defined by philosopher Timothy Morton, a hyperobject is an entity so massively distributed in time and space that it transcends typical human scales of perception and comprehension. It is characterized by viscosity (adhering to other objects), nonlocality (existing in multiple places simultaneously), temporal undulation (oscillating between time scales), phasing (manifesting in different ways at different times), and being interobjective (formed through interactions of numerous other objects). In PS, both Monads and entire Universes are considered hyperobjects.
Psychopomp: A “mythical creature”, spirit, angel, demon, or deity whose role is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. Psychopomps provide safe passage and direction to the realm of the dead. Common examples include Hermes, Charon, Anubis, Valkyries, and Angels of Death. The concept highlights the universal human concern with death and transition. In the modern PS context, UFOs are seen as the most common ‘vehicle between reference frames’, serving a psychopomp-like function by facilitating transitions between different states of awareness or realities.

Wholeness: the functional integration of the five autonomous systems (or “brains”) of the human being:

Left Brain Hemisphere — the verbal, analytical, pain-self.
Right Brain Hemisphere — the nonverbal, big-picture transcendent self.
Enteric Nervous System (Gut) — the shadow archive and emotional pattern buffer.
Bioplasma Interface — the Dream Substance body and subtle energy field.
Monadic Trace (Star/Ajna) — the cosmic dashboard of coordination and knowing.

When these systems are interfaced and synchronized, the human becomes a conscious interface for REALITY itself—able to experience both the broken and unbroken aspects of existence with Aplomb (graceful composure).

Key Characteristics of Wholeness in PS

Nonverbal Integration: Wholeness is felt and lived, not theorized. It emerges through practices that quiet the word engine and activate nonverbal knowing.
Ontological Equivalence: All experiences—joy, suffering, transcendence, trauma—are equally valid parts of the divine play. Wholeness means embracing them all.
No Escape Required: Unlike systems that seek transcendence or escape, PS teaches that wholeness is found by participating fully in the scene you’re in.
Interface Activation: Wholeness is operationalized through practices that bring online the full interface system—like One Breath Eye Tracing, Liquid Heart, and Interface Ack.
Composed Participation: Wholeness is not about control or mastery, but about showing up with clarity, compassion, and creative agency.

Wholeness ≠ Perfection

PS explicitly rejects the idea of spiritual perfection or ego annihilation. Instead, it honors the messy, evolving, and often painful process of becoming whole. You don’t slay the ego—you befriend it. You don’t transcend suffering—you integrate it.

PS reformulates traditional concepts as follows:

Spirit: In PS, ‘spirit’ correlates with AWARENESS itself, the cosmic-scale ability to reflect, be sentient, and form causal links between potential and active properties. It also refers to the streams of AWARENESS branching from Monads.

Soul: In PS, ‘soul’ refers to a temporary, created informational construct generated by living beings and used in various ‘movies’ or experiences, including after-death states. It’s a work product of AWARENESS interacting with POTENTIALITY, not a permanent, individual entity. A ‘soul’ is a specific purpose and may exist for 1 minute or one trillion years. Souls come. Souls go. You are eternal.

Group Soul: In PS, ‘group soul’ (or ‘Cosmic Octopus’) refers to the Anima Mundi, the vast ocean of Being, an expansive collective ‘soul’ or living ‘planes of existence’ formed by the aggregated Dream Substance of complex living things.
Co-incarnation: In PS, this term replaces traditional notions of ‘reincarnation’. It demonstrates that we live many lives at once, concurrently, rather than sequentially. These simultaneous lives can encompass all forms, from ‘inanimate matter’, single cell organisms, higher lifeforms of all kinds, paupers, kings, and ultimately hyperobjects such as Jungian archetypes or UFOs, emphasizing that all experiences are part of the broader play of AWARENESS and POTENTIALITY.
God/REALITY: In PS, these terms are synonymous and refer to the comprehensive sum total of all the primary definitions within the framework: POTENTIALITY, AWARENESS, PRIMORDIAL CONSCIOUSNESS, FRACTURED CONSCIOUSNESS, DECEPTION, THE LAWS OF PHYSICS, MONADS, and THE MOVIES. It signifies the complete system of existence as described within the Platonic Surrealism framework, where all elements are interconnected and ontologically equivalent, rather than a singular, external entity. It is important to note that ‘God’ is largely passive, and that it’s the subset of temporary beings as they evolve into more complex forms that are ‘active’.

Divine Elusiveness: This concept explains why ‘God’, ‘Higher entities’, or ‘UFOs’ do not overtly manifest in ways that would be undeniably obvious (e.g., “land on the White House lawn”). Such a clear and indisputable manifestation would “ruin the movie” on an individual level. If ‘Reality’ were so overtly undeniable, individuals would lose the capacity to act as truly free agents and to creatively evolve, as the compelling nature of overt demonstration would negate the space for independent choice and imaginative co-creation.

Kevin Cann
Platonic Surrealism
9/26/2025