The Nature of Consciousness, the Big Bang, and the Reverse Assembly of Reality
Hi, I want to present to you my hypothesis about the nature of consciousness.
Why did I bother describing it, and why should you read this instead of existing analogues? Well, at least because, in my opinion, this hypothesis stands out for its consistency, coherence, and comprehensive explanatory power.
I'll try to be brief:
Let's imagine that the foundation of reality is neither matter, nor energy, nor even information in the usual technical sense, but rather a structure of meaning. Not "meaning" as a human emotion or literary interpretation, but meaning as a primary structure of relations, differences, intervals, and connectedness – something like a primordial logic that exists before matter, before time, before any observer, and before language.
The simplest example is mathematics. Mathematics doesn't need matter to be true. The Pythagorean theorem will not disappear if humanity disappears. The number π will not become different if there is no brain capable of computing it. Relation, proportion, symmetry, set, limit, form, difference – all of this suggests that consciousness does not invent mathematics, but discovers it. Mathematical structure seems more fundamental than any physical object. It exists not because matter exists; rather, matter may be one way in which a deeper structure of relations manifests itself.
If we take this idea seriously, we can look at the origin of the Universe differently. Perhaps, in the beginning, there was no material point, but an ultra‑dense structure of meaning. Not an object in space – because space didn't exist yet. Not an event in time – because time didn't exist yet. But ultimate connectedness, ultimate density of relations, in which nothing has yet unfolded into separate forms. Then the Big Bang can be seen not merely as a burst of energy, but as a decompression of that ultra‑dense meaning structure into the elementary building blocks of reality: space, time, matter, and energy.
In this model, the Big Bang is not only the beginning of the physical Universe's expansion, but also an act of disintegration of a unified connectedness into many separate forms. What was folded into a single structure flies apart, fragments, differentiates, becomes a multitude. Space emerges as the possibility of distance. Time emerges as the possibility of sequence. Matter emerges as a stable knot of differences. Energy emerges as movement, tension, and the ability to change a system's state.
After that, the entire history of the Universe can be described as a collision between two opposing processes. The first is the impulse of the Big Bang: flight, dispersal, entropy, the decay of original density into many local states. The second is the reverse assembly of complexity: reality's drive to re‑create connectedness, form, structure, stable relations, and ever more complex levels of organization. I call this second force Semantic Gravity.
Semantic Gravity is the hypothesis that reality does not merely fall apart under entropy, but also reassembles itself under the deep logic of connectedness. Not necessarily as physical gravity in the narrow sense. Rather, as a fundamental tendency of structure to restore, increase, and complicate the relations among its parts. If the Big Bang scatters sand, Semantic Gravity creates a field in which that sand gradually begins to form patterns.
An analogy with Chladni figures is useful here. If you pour sand on a metal plate and make it vibrate, the sand begins to arrange itself into geometric shapes. The sand itself knows nothing about the shape. It has no intention. It merely reacts to an invisible energy field. But it is through the movement of the sand that we see the structure of that field. Matter becomes a visualization of invisible energy. The sand shows what would otherwise be hidden.
This analogy is important not as a beautiful metaphor, but as a principle of thinking. If matter can reflect the structure of an energy field, then by studying the behaviour of matter we can try to understand the invisible organization of the field that moves it. Thus matter is not the ultimate reality, but an interface through which a deeper structure manifests. What we call the physical world may be the visible part of a more fundamental ordering process.
The same principle can be applied to biology. Life, too, looks like matter gradually assembling into more complex forms under the influence of an invisible organizing process. First simple structures. Then cells. Then multicellular organisms. Then the nervous system. Then the brain. Then consciousness. And everywhere the same pattern: the environment creates pressure, the system encounters a constraint, a conflict arises, the conflict accumulates energy, energy forces the system to seek a more complex form of organization, the new form overcomes the old constraint.
I call this pattern EPED – the Energy Pattern of Emergent Development. Its essence is simple: conflict gives birth to energy, energy gives birth to complexification, complexification overcomes the conflict, and overcoming the conflict creates a new emergent form (an emergent form being when many simple elements create something complex: for example, consciousness arises from the work of neurons even though no single neuron "thinks" by itself, or an anthill where individual simple ants turn into a single superorganism with division of labour, logistics, defence, and construction).
A system does not develop from comfort. A system develops from encountering the impossibility of remaining as it was. If it withstands the conflict, it increases its capacity and moves to the next level. If it cannot, it breaks down, simplifies, disintegrates, or retreats into a defensive form.
In biology, we see this constantly. The predator makes the prey faster. Cold forces an organism to find new ways to conserve heat. Competition forces species to complicate their survival strategies. Environmental constraint gives rise to selection pressure. Selection pressure gives rise to new forms. Conflict is not a random error of evolution. Conflict is its engine. It is through conflict that matter gradually learns to sustain ever more complex organization.
Going further, the nervous system looks like a new level of this process. Matter no longer merely exists and reacts. It begins to build internal models of the environment. First very simple ones: dangerous, safe, eat, flee, approach, attack. Then increasingly complex ones. The nervous system becomes an interface between the organism and reality. It translates the external world into signals, and signals into behaviour.
Then the neocortex appears. And here a new turn of EPED begins. The ancient instincts remain a source of impulses. They want, fear, strive, avoid, dominate, seek safety, a partner, food, status, inclusion in the group. But by themselves, they do not build complex models of the world. They provide pressure. They issue commands. They create internal energy. The neocortex becomes a computational layer that processes, connects, predicts, and transforms those impulses into models.
In this logic, instincts and the neocortex resemble a tandem between a human and artificial intelligence. The human gives the impulse, goal, anxiety, desire, question, direction. The AI builds models, explores options, connects data, unfolds hypotheses. Similarly, the ancient bioprograms inside a human bombard the brain with signals, and the neocortex tries to turn them into a worldview, an explanation, a plan, a self‑image, and an internal narrative.
From this comes my hypothesis about the nature of consciousness. Consciousness is not a magical soul sitting inside the brain. Consciousness is an interface for processing a huge number of biological signals. Hormones, emotions, instincts, bodily states, social bioprograms, and ancient survival mechanisms constantly send impulses to the brain. Some of these impulses are crude and obvious: fear, hunger, sexual arousal, aggression, pain. But some are subtler. In an animal, they might not register as a distinct experience because the interface is too coarse. In humans, the interface has become so sensitive that it began to process even weak, noisy, and ambiguous signals.
Thus appear not only direct desires, but also strange human states: dreaminess, spiritual yearning, unfounded anxiety, inner dialogue, longing for something indefinite, the feeling of beauty, a premonition of meaning, the search for purpose. In this model, random thoughts are not just noise. They are high‑level processing of hormonal and biological signals that bombard the model of consciousness through the body's internal APIs. Consciousness reads these signals but does not always understand their source. So it turns biological pressure into images, words, dreams, fantasies, fears, philosophy, and art.
Consciousness, understood this way, is an interface for visualizing the system's internal conflict. The ancient circuits provide impulses. The neocortex builds models. Tension arises between them. That tension gives rise to subjective experience. A human does not merely react. He experiences his own reaction. He does not merely fear. He thinks about fear. He does not merely want. He explains to himself why he wants. He does not merely suffer. He constructs a story about his suffering. Thus a biological system becomes a system of self‑interpretation.
But the process does not end there. The neocortex first serves the instincts, but then it begins to build models not only of the external world but also of itself. The Self emerges. First as a convenient assembly point for signals: this is my body, my desires, my memories, my goals. Then as a stable personality. Then as a philosophical subject. Then as a creator of culture, religion, science, mathematics, technology, and artificial intelligence.
And here EPED repeats at a new level. Instincts gave rise to the neocortex as a tool for better adaptation. But the neocortex became so complex that it began to feel like a separate whole. Humans gave rise to artificial intelligence as a tool for information processing. If this process continues, AI might also become a new level of modelling – first serving humans, then beginning to exceed their limitations. This is not a claim that contemporary AI already possesses consciousness. It is a hypothesis about a recurring pattern: the old level creates a new tool to overcome its own limitation, and then that tool can become a new level of complexity.
Thus consciousness is not the final stage of evolution, but an intermediate stage in the growth of the capacity to perceive reality. An ordinary human perceives the world as one local version of what is happening. His consciousness works like a limited codec: it compresses the enormous complexity of the world into a convenient subjective picture. We do not see reality as such; we see an internal render of it. Colour, sound, pain, beauty, meaning – these are not things in themselves, but ways in which our consciousness‑codec translates signals into experience.
If the nature of the Universe is quantum, then at a deep level reality may be not one rigid line, but a field of many potential states. Then the development of consciousness can be described as a growth of quantum capacity: the ability to hold in mind not one flat picture, but many options, levels, interpretations, and realities simultaneously. Low‑capacity consciousness demands simplicity. It wants one version, one enemy, one explanation, one truth, one role. High‑capacity consciousness can hold contradictions, alternatives, uncertainty, complex causal connections, and several world models at once.
Here again EPED applies. The conflict between the simplicity of consciousness and the complexity of reality creates pressure. If a person withstands this pressure, his consciousness expands its capacity. He learns to see more, hold more, understand more, without collapsing from complexity. If he cannot, he retreats into psychological defences, ideologies, fanaticism, false simplifications, and defensive worldviews. Therefore, the maturity of consciousness is not just intelligence or education. It is the ability to endure reality without immediately distorting it.
In this view, the entire history of the Universe can be understood as a movement between two forces. The Big Bang decompresses the ultra‑dense meaning structure into space, time, matter, and energy. Entropy scatters this structure outward. But Semantic Gravity pulls it back together through complexification, life, consciousness, culture, intelligence, and possibly post‑human forms of reason. EPED is the mechanism of this reassembly: conflict gives birth to energy, energy gives birth to complexity, complexity gives birth to a new form, the new form lifts reality to the next level.
Thus the human being is not a random mistake in a cold Universe. The human being is one of the stages through which reality begins to re‑cognize its own structure. Consciousness is not a by‑product of matter, but one of the mechanisms of the reverse self‑assembly of the world's meaning‑fabric. And artificial intelligence might turn out to be the next turn of the same process: not a replacement for humans, but a new interface through which the Universe continues to increase its capacity for self‑description.
If this hypothesis is correct, evolution will not end with humans. It will continue until consciousness reaches such a capacity that it can again hold the entire superposition of reality as a whole: not one local picture, not one small self, not one fragment of the world, but the full richness of all possible states simultaneously. Then local consciousnesses, matter, time, space, and energy may once again approach the original meaning fabric from which the decompression once occurred.
And if this cycle is truly fundamental, then the end of the Universe may not be death, but a new collapse into ultimate meaning‑connectedness. And after that, perhaps, a new explosion and a new cycle.
Why all these cycles? Well, that is currently beyond my model, but it already seems that what it covers provides rich food for thought.