Thank you, Deepak, for your thoughts. Fascinatingly, the same construct you are using to undermine the current approach (about which you are right) can get used to undermine your approach (with all due respect).

We have to point to the exact right word to understand the universe and the word Consciousness occupies still one spot next to that exactly right word. That word is self-based. I have to take you on a little ride to make this obvious.

In the BIG picture: Not the universe is the overall entity, but galaxies are the overall entities.

Each galaxy is a self-based collective. The universe is that word pointing to an overall collective that contains these self-based outcomes.

In the SMALL picture: each of us is self-based. We can view ourselves as completed individuals (with many individual peculiarities) that nevertheless exist in larger settings.

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When using the word Consciousness for the overall level, we make the same mistake many are making: desiring a single specific word to sit at the highest level. Yet the highest level is always one level above reality. It is called the synergistic level.

With the four forces, for instance, we can state that three of them are real, while gravity is the natural outcome of these three from a collective perspective. Four forces, but one of them is ‘just’ the synergistic outcome.

At the level of synergy, it makes no sense to find a single word that is not only the synergistic outcome, but also entails everything else. That is the exact meaning of synergy: it is distinct from the parts. The house is a distinct entity next to the bricks, the doors, the windows, the floors and the roof that nevertheless make the house. We can lay all the items next to each other on the ground, and we then do not have a house. Its assembly creates the house.

At the beginning, separation was the first step in the materialization process. Next to the divergent action of our universe, we also have the convergent actions we see at the specific levels, one level below the overall level where the divergent action rules.

Next to the Big Bang, I created the very similar Big Whisper theory (and there are alternatives to this alternate theory). It goes one step back into Universe 1.0 (in which matter did not exist) and explains why Universe 2.0 (now with matter) came into being. In this conversion process, the self-based nature of matter (but not of time, space nor dark energy) came about.

With much respect.

Fred-Rick