AUTHOR’S NOTE: As a teenager in the ’60s I read a 1963 science-fiction book by Daniel Galouye titled Simulacron-3 that described a computer-generated city in which the inhabitants “thought” they were conscious beings but were in fact only figments of the programmer’s imagination, fictional participants in a market-research simulation (an early take on the ideas explored in The Truman Show and the modern Westworld).

It embraced a broader debate that pondered whether the totality of human experience resides in an enormously complex computer program and we are all binary patterns of Ones and Zeros energized by a host of electrons zipping around a closed circuit where individual sentience is an illusion. This memory was prompted by my recent encounter with the notion that the Universe and everything in it is a vast matrix of informational “data bits” that approximate physical reality as we think we know it.

Apparently, mainstream scientists have recently taken note of what has traditionally been the purview of parapsychologists and mystics: we do not live in a three-dimensional realm of fixed properties and stable proportions but rather one whose parameters and boundaries are constantly shifting. Quantum physics has gone a long way toward popularizing the assumption that matter and energy are not dissimilar concepts but instead are interdependent aspects of a single reality that transitions effortlessly between one state and the other at the sub-atomic level.

This highly abstract and elusive premise has bolstered the “We Are All One” worldview of metaphysical visionaries. But it begs the question whether this information means anything in pragmatic terms if there isn’t a human mind at the end of the chain to perceive and process it into the language of personal awareness. The hypothesis that subjective and objective reality are “all of a piece” as scaled expressions of Universal Consciousness is appealing but not easy to objectify. We may feel that we are part of a larger, more profound actuality without being able to do more than postulate its true nature in purely mystical terms.

It reminds me of the philosophical conundrum of a tree falling in the forest: does it make any sound if there is no ear in the vicinity to intercept and translate the disturbance into an aural event? The argument as I see it is that there is still a perturbation in the atmosphere but it can’t be characterized as “sound” unless it is heard or picked up by instruments designed for sonic reception. Similarly, our understanding of what is “real” is filtered through our sensory apparatus, which puts an individualized “spin” on it. So I guess it comes down to the semantics of academic hair-splitting.

Leveraging the data-driven analogy, it could be said that we don’t possess a “body” so much as manifest an “energy signature” or localized vortex of interpenetrating form and force that slowly uncoils as we age. For those who believe in reincarnation, it’s reasonable to assume that souls who fail to evolve from one life to the next are caught in a “do-loop” of repetitive routine wherein the “cosmic coding” is corrupted by their dereliction and advancement is short-circuited. We could also riff on the child’s tale of the “The Little Engine That Could” by recasting it as the “Descartes Express:” “I think I am, I think I am, I think I am . . . but I’m not entirely sure who I am.” In quantum terms it could be inconsequential.

This all-pervading “one-ness” has been proposed by Dr. Dean Radin as the power at work behind psionic phenomena like precognition, remote viewing and the various extrasensory abilities prefixed with “clair-” (clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, etc.) My main problem with this theory from a divinatory standpoint is that subliminal information does not become knowledge (and by extension, wisdom) unless the recipient is perfectly attuned to its rarefied “vibratory rate” and is thus able to unpack it into intelligible content (although many try to surmount the credibility gap with a giant leap of faith involving spirit guides or divine intervention). Lacking that refined finesse, we are reduced to channeling psychic “noise” and I’m not convinced that the tools of divination (and, it must be said, those who wield them) are sensitive enough to decipher the message, so intuitive speculation becomes a stop-gap measure abetted by a hyperactive imagination and a handful of tarot cards.

We can imagine that we are seeing, hearing or feeling remote events and circumstances but, unless we travel to the location of their occurrence or communicate with those directly involved, do we really know for sure? If the outcome doesn’t address a newsworthy matter of public interest, I doubt that many diviners go to the trouble of finding out after a reading. The laboratory experiments that have been performed along these lines do not seem to have produced more than tantalizing hints of the existence of literal (i.e. quantitative) as opposed to conjectural (i.e. qualitative) evidence, and they are always at risk of creeping into “SWAG” (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess”) territory because persuasive proof is so hard to come by. From what I’ve seen lately, I don’t really believe that divination as currently practiced qualifies as a “litmus test” for demonstrating the veracity of these suppositions, so the only recourse for the open-minded skeptic would be to meet the “SWAG” contingent half-way.