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The Singularity

by Shawn Mikula, shawnmikula@hotmail.com

From: mind-brain.com

"At the Singularity, history as we know it, will cease."

What is the Singularity? Different people mean different things by this term. For me, the Singularity refers to the point of time in the future when human consciousness, at both the personal and species level, experiences an abrupt transition, a phase transition of sorts, into a state of transcendence that is conceptually impossible for us to imagine "what it's like" with our current limited cognitive abilities.

My usage of the term "Singularity" is an analogy to the well-known singularity in physics, the black hole, where you cannot see beyond the event horizon because light cannot escape from it. In a similar manner, we cannot see (or imagine) what's beyond the consciousness Singularity because it's beyond our cognitive (or imaginative) capabilities.

Imagine, if you will, what a monkey would experience if suddenly it's consciousness became like that of a human. Before the transition, the monkey would be incapable of imagining what it's like to be human simply because it's beyond it's cognitive capabilities. In the same way, I believe our species will undergo such transitions in our consciousness of such magnitude that we cannot even begin to imagine what these new states of consciousness are like.

At the Singularity, history as we know it, will cease. The universe, as we experience it now, will cease. Consider the most transcendent and mystical states of consciousness that have yet been experienced by mankind: these will pale in comparison with what's to come! This is the Singularity. And there won't be just one Singularity, but many, as consciousness overcomes and transcends itself, over and over again.

Our consciousness will be expanded beyond the confines of an egocentric sense of self to include transpersonal experiences and transcendent self-identity. This new existence will be both a form of collective consciousness and a form of expanded individual consciousness. Though sounding like a contradiction, realize that these two descriptions of transcendent consciousness are really two sides of the same coin. The Singularity is so far beyond our experience and knowledge today that we cannot even begin to comprehend it, unless we ourselves experience transcendent states of consciousness.

How do we realize the Singularity? How do we experience transcendent states of consciousness? See my section on Expanding Consciousness for an answer.