As Lao Tzu said:

“Tao produced the One.
The One produced the two.
The two produced the three.
And the three produced the ten thousand things.”

You can see this sequence in the Tarot as well:
The Fool = Tao. The Fool is the void from which everything springs.
One = Major Arcanum I, the Magician. The Magician is the One, the primal mover, the power of the Will.
Two = … II, the High Priestess. The High Priestess represents the opposing forces that come into being as soon as the One is differentiated.
Three = … III, the Empress. The Empress is a resolution of the tension in the High Priestess; the tension between the Two is resolved via the addition of a third that incorporates elements of both. This is why some analysts believe that the Empress is pregnant.
10,000 = … IV, The Emperor. The Emperor represents dominion over the material world. In some cards he is shown sitting on a block of stone, representing the four corners of the world.

I don’t know if I agree with this idea or not. It is mathematically and intuitively satisfying, but it doesn’t seem to be the way nature works. After all, you didn’t start with one star, which created another one, and then a third… or one homo sapiens, who created another one out of nothing, and then a third… instead, you had a large mass of some OTHER thing — superheated hydrogen gas, homo habilis, whatever — which undergoes some kind of phase shift via the introduction or loss of energy or a changing environment, creating a whole bunch of a brand new kind of thing.

I don’t know if I’m making any sense. I apologize for rambling!

I suspect there’s going to be a lot of discussion on this topic at Steve’s forums, as soon as they go live. It should be great!

If I understood his model correctly, there would be no way ever to prove the existence of another separate consciousness. If that is true, then it seems that the only conclusion you would be left with is that YOU are the only consciousness that did, does, or ever will exist. Sounds kinda lonely to me.

Also, if YOU are the only consciousness and have created this subjective reality, just why did YOU create a subjective reality that YOU don’t know more about. It appears to be a rather complicated reality with all sorts of rules and you would think that you would know how you came about creating it. If YOU are the only consciousness, then this has to be an original creation, (not based on any other’s creation). You would think that you would know how you “programmed” this reality. Well, what if you did remember programming the game – but wait, you can’t trust your memories so you can’t be sure that the memory is valid and so are left with the conclusion that YOU must have done the programming since you are the only thing that exists, but for some reason you don’t know how or why. Kinda scary or schizoid to me.

The model I am “working” with is more along the lines you have expressed. However, it does start that “in the beginning” there was only one consciousness that became self-aware and recognized itself as ME. It then came up with the concept of NOT-ME – and like having children – developed the rest of us out of its own consciousness. So maybe there is just a single consciousness with a multiple personality “disorder”, or, in this case, its not a disorder, but something that would keep it from going “crazy”. The “universe/reality” is our “playground” and how would it do anything other than humor us. Since we are all equal creations, it tries to please us all and accomodate us however it can.

This was my first visit to your website which I linked to from Steve Pavlina’s, but I will most certainly be back.