(continued)The book is packed with vague or unclear claims on several subjects,
only sometimes related to astral matters.
By now I become aware of one more annoying habit of Campbell. He enumerates
things. He count them up and write them on the forehead of the reader. Long
list of items or concepts, with no particular purpose, other than making his
book become even more boring.
Does Campbell say anything interesting, like:
"Hey guys, I met this non-physical
consciousness of a scrapped computer. We talked for at while and once I've
informed it that its model went out of market, it realized there was no more
incarnation for it." Does Campbell write anything fun like that?
His asides are mostly boring.
More than a third through Volume II, Campbell is now not only making forward
referencings, he also starts doing backward referencings to previous chapters.
Sadly enough this double pointed referencing doesn't provide the reader with
any more info, it just makes the book harder and more boring to read.
To paraphrase a TV-serie, The Big Bang Theory, where one of the characters
state: "Sheldon Cooper has managed to make a boring subject become unbearable."
Halfway through Volume II, I can say that Campbell certainly has managed to make
an interesting subject become not only boring, but reading his second book is
boring to the extent that I was actually considering _not_ finishing it. But in
the hope to get some enlightenment at the end, I struggled on.
It's a mystery to me how someone manages to write a full book about the astral,
and fill it with more than +800 pages of text without making the content of
the book become really exciting one single time. Campbell certainly has
worked hard.
Volume II really hits rock bottom. Reading Campbell's second Volume feels like
having had a heavy lead weight chained and locked to your ankles and being
shoved off the deck of a boat, into the ocean.
And somewhere after pages 170 - 180, the book slows down and becomes really heavy
to read. The later part of Volume II moves forward only very slowly and Campbell's
text enters loops where previous statements are repeated at least 10 (20?) times
with both forward and backward references to other chapters, many of these
chapters belonging to Volume I and III.
I get only vague motives from Campbell, why does he repeat the same statements
over and over again in various forms? A fair guess is that Campbell may see
his book as a teaching tool and he wants people to learn its content
by repetition.
The second half of Volume II is so slow that it at times almost seems to grind
to a halt, producing no new info. Only subjects and statements already mentioned
or already worked through by Campbell are worked over yet again.
The only remedy Campbell offers the reader is patience, patience and he
repeats it again, more patience, eventually if your read on for long enough,
you will reach Volume III, Campbell encourages the reader.
I actually went back to Volume I, several times, when Campbell made a backward
reference in Volume II. To my surprise, those referenced chapters in Volume I
often had little in common with the original reference in Volume II, so I
wonder if Campbell really is aware of the lack of consistency with his back-
and forward referencing in his texts? Campbell is particular fond of
backward referencing to Chapter 24 of Volume I.
At times Campbell's writings are so fuzzy that I can't even tell if he is
a poor writer or just a very boring writer. But surely the second part of
Volume II contains nothing, no experiences from the astral, not methods
to improve your astral abilities, just a lot of text about AUM and the
human consciousness, text which he already has stated in previous texts.
"AUM's attitudes and feelings toward ... humanity, or any particular human ...
...are beyond the scope of even the biggest Big TOE..." (page 75)
Campbell reaches the conclusion very early, that everything in the physical
world is only thoughtforms of AUM. We and everything around us are only
thoughtforms of the AUM, which is quite like the idea that everything in
the physical world is a dream. And again, Campbell is forward referencing
(page 78).
Too often Campbell just points out the obvious, usually after a very long
text, sometimes spanning several pages, where the reader already has
figured out the conclusion after the first few sentences.
Such subjects of Campbell with very obvious conclusions ranges from
communication problems between humans, observing our world through our
five senses, religious opinions, reading books or being trapped in
scientific belief systems.
Often Campbell enumerates boring long list of objects like religion,
politics, business, commerce, trade, etc. And then he makes some very
pointless remark on his list, a remark which he then expands in a lot
of ways which are obvious to the reader from the start, and which adds
very little info about astral matters to the reader.
A little surprisingly Campbell makes a claim about our local astral leader
of our local astral reality. (The local leader is far from AUM.) The
Local Leader, Big Cheese, Big CEO, Big Boss, Top Dog, Local Supreme Being;
is male, it's a "he"! (page 91)
Campbell also claims the (local) Big Boss/CEO can terminate any astral
being who doesn't play by the rules (who's rules?). Campbell isn't too
clear about the expression "terminate", though, so we are left to guess
what that expression means. My own reflection is that Campbell's view
on the astral local Big Boss resembles traditional Christianity's view
on the one God, the Father.
Campbell also states a lot of interesting truths, except for the fact that
most people have already figured out these facts for themselves during their
early twenties.
At times Campbell has an annoying habit of telling the reader what to do
or what not to do, and many times he is kind of vague in his directions,
too, which makes his advice of less value.
It's very boring to read the same repeated statements about our consciousness
or that our bacteria in our colon or other intestines. In fact, Campbell for
lengths of texts repeats the words: anus, colon, intestinal and bacteria.
To no good I should add.
The problem with Campbell's repetition of all his already previously stated
statements is that he never comes to the point. What's the idea with three
Volumes full of text? Campbell probably can't put it any clearer himself,
with his own words in Volume II, on page 196:
"I expect that I have by now exceeded the credibility threshold of many readers.
In techno-jargon that means that I have pegged their BS meters."In the second half of Volume II, Campbell makes a lot of comparison between
the astral and a computer. I say, maybe things can be modelled, but Campbell
gives away very few details about how he has come to that conclusion and
leaves out a lot, except for some very vague details about the astral. The
whole chapter where Campbell compares our world with a computer game is of
little value.
Campbell further makes the claim that AUM (the collected consciousness of
all there is), optimizes how each living being interacts. I would say that
such a view leaves a lot unsolved, as humans seem to have evolved very
little the last thousand years. Wars are still going on, we are consuming
our natural resources, polluting our environment, we have a lot of not
so democratic leadership and there are lot of criminals all over, etc.
But as with all Campbell's claims he seldom goes into details, and doesn't
discuss specifics of our world and why things look bad. I remember someone
saying, perhaps humans don't want to change? Nevertheless, Campbell
continues to draw parallels between biological evolution and a computer
game containing an "AI Guy" in the second half of Volume II, see for
example page 276 and forward.
Around page 320 in Volume II, Campbell again argues for the claim that physical
reality doesn't exist, it is created by our non-physical minds. At the same
time Campbell argues for the claim that we are here in the physical because
we are here to map uncharted territory, making new discoveries.
Campbell further claims that there doesn't exist anything except for
consciousness and AUM is consciousness. What lies outside AUM, which
is all there is, Campbell states is outside the scope of TOE.
At one point Campbell states that there is a bigger computer than TBC, as TBC
is just one of many computers, there exists an Even Bigger Computer (EBC).
Campbell seems to be a little vague if the TBCs are parts of EBC or if TBCs
are simulated within EBC.
I get the impression that both TBC and EBC are analogies to describe something
which is difficult to describe in words. Anyway, EBC seems to be almost
the same as AUM; EBC = AUM (?).
It's strange that Campbell doesn't touch the exterior to AUM, because I would
think that would be even more interesting than AUM, right? Introspection
only could be boring in the long run.
Sadly enough, Campbell provides nothing, no experiences of his own, not
even small detailed descriptions of his non-physical experiences, to back
up his claims. No written experiences from the astral. That's unusual
for a book which is about the non-physical reality.
Campbell returns to failures of science as he states that scientists only
look for small picture solutions, and when running into inconsistencies,
they add things like uncertainty principles, because they are unable to
see the Big TOE (Volume II, page 336).
Repeating 20 times that in the Little Picture you can't see the Big Picture,
doesn't help the reader. Repetition without substance doesn't move the
storyline forward, Volume II becomes stuck in a textual loop where almost
identical expressions of Campbell are repeated over and over again.
It's a shame.
My Big TOE: Inner Workings, Volume III, 1 ed, 2003, Thomas Campbell
GRADE: 4.0
I question if Volume III is worth reading, unless you really want to follow every
track from the Monroe school to its end. Volume III is better than Volume II, in
the sense that Volume III does come to the point not as slowly.
Volume III mostly contains repetition of material already repeated several
times in the previous two Volumes. Volume III consist of two parts:
Section 5 which repeats Sections 2 (from Volume I) and also repeats
Sections 3 & 4 (from Volume II).
Section 6 which summarize Sections 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Even Campbell himself, states at the beginning of Volume III, that the reader
may choose to skip some chapters as they are repeating old stuff from previous
Volumes.
I was trying hard to find something to quote from Volume III, which wasn't
already repeated in one of the two previous Volumes. I'm not sure I found
anything worth mentioning.
Somewhere during the year 1900, a German scientist, Max Planck, discovered a small
quantified time "increment", which he called the Planck Time. Campbell believes in
the idea of these time increments being fixed in the physical world, he also thinks
that AUM is able to use much smaller time increments in the non-physical world to
simulation the physical world.
(Campbell doesn't mention Planck in Volume III, he only mentions Planck and
the Planck Time in Volume I, page 261 and forward.)
Campbell uses his concepts The Big Computer (TBC) and Absolute Unbound Manifold
(AUM) a lot in Volume III. TBC is a small part of AUM. In fact there are plenty
of TBCs all over AUM. AUM is the equivalent of RB's the Source or some kind of
God of Everything. And our consciousnesses are tiny parts of AUM.
In the first half of Volume III, Campbell spends a good deal of text describing
how the AUM-computer-mind uses time increments. Reason being that Campbell thinks
that all of the physical world is a simulation by The Big Computer (TBC). The time
increments are used by TBC to calculate possible futures, while the physical world
is ticking by, on its much slower time increments stepped up by TBC.
The use of time increments to simulate a computer game is basic programming, but
by some reason Campbell uses tons of text to repeat almost the same statements
about his ideas about these time increments, utilized by AUM, the
digital-mind-computer.
As our minds are non-physical and we live in physical bodies, we are somehow
synchronized with the much slower physical world's time increments, if I get
Campbell right.
Campbell also mentions parallel realities copied from our reality, and the
possibility that AUM can stop the clock of a given physical world, to examine
the situation better.
TBC will let possible futures continue to run on their own, so AUM can find out
if the TBC simulation is appropriate. Such future TBC runs are not our actual
reality (but may become).
Travellers in the non-physical may pick up these future predictions of AUM and
may sometimes think that they see future events and not only computer calculated
possibilities. The Big Computer stores everything (page 98) in a way equivalent
to the famous sanskrit Akashic records, including possibly futures never actualized.
Campbell gives no description of his own experiences on how he has reached his
conclusions.
Volume III contains lots of repetitions and those all too common backward
referencings of previous material. Campbell presents some of his ideas in a
less fuzzy way in chapter 4 of Section 5 in Volume III, but at the same time,
Campbell provides very little new info, which hasn't already been put forward
by other authors like Monroe/Moen/RB, who I think have done much better work.
At times I feel that I'm reading a new, but poorer, version of
Waiting for Godot.
Very seldom Campbell can be funny but probably not in an intentional way. His
standpoint is that AUM has a digital consciousness, a digital mind, thinking in
terms of ones and zeros, for example on page 78 Campbell claims:
"...if you can imagine that the AUM-digital-consciousness-thing is completely
beyond your imagination, you have taken the first step towards understanding..."So, if you can imagine beyond your imagination, you may understand...
Well.
At the end of Volume III, Campbell claims that our consciousnesses are fractal
and he also quotes some scientists and philosophers.
---
This book is so without answers to a lot of questions. I would at least expect
a physics professor to include in a TOE how the non-physical can connect to the
physical.
How can our non-physical consciousnesses connect to our physical bodies, and
why can't we detect this non-physical thing with any kind of scientific equipment?
The book lacks answers to most questions for being about a TOE.
What Campbell says is essentially that he has a TOE (Theory of Everything).
He also doesn't present his TOE in more than a very fuzzy model. He further
states that it's almost of no use to the reader to read Campbell's personal
TOE. The reader has to find his own TOE. Everyone has to find her/his own TOE.
Also, every TOE will be different from anyone else's TOE. And that's the reason
why Campbell doesn't go into finer details about his TOE.
Everyone has to experience the Larger Reality for themselves to reach any
detailed conclusions about a TOE.
Perhaps that's the reason why the book is called
_My_ Big TOE and not
The Big TOE?