Astrology, Conscious Systems and Theoretical Physics

Ever since childhood I have been fascinated by both astrology and theoretical physics.  Both disciplines offer an unorthodox view of reality which defies common sense. After practicing astrology for many years, it became clear to me that astrology is not a science but an art which enables the astrologer to read the information contained in the patterns of the heavens.  Through astrology, I came to view our solar system and the universe as an illustration of the elegance of Newton’s and Kepler’s laws and Einstein’s theory of relativity and as containing information which astrologers had learned partially how to decode. In other words, astrology led me to the notion that the universe, through its lawful organization and structure, possesses consciousness whose contents are open to astrologers through their methods of interpretation.

Recently I’ve been reading about a fascinating theory about the nature of consciousness, which originates in in neuroscience (another of my favorite interests). In this theory proposed by Toroni in 2008, a conscious system possesses two features:

It can store and process large amounts of information.  Astrologers believe the universe does this via its lawful organization.
This information is integrated into a unified whole which cannot be divided into individual parts.  Astrologers believe the doctrine “As above, so below” which is another way of saying that the universe is a unified whole which cannot be divided into individual parts without losing its integrity.

Toroni’s theory, as applied to astrology, suggests that the universe is a conscious system and supports my own sense from practicing astrology that the information contained in this universal consciousness is what astrologers access through their various methods.

If you’re interested in this line of theorizing, I recommend reading the article at this link Tegmark at MIT which describes some theorizing by the theoretical physicist Max Tegmark at MIT.  Here is a brief quote from that article:

Tegmark’s approach is to think of consciousness as a state of matter, like a solid, a liquid or a gas. “I conjecture that consciousness can be understood as yet another state of matter. Just as there are many types of liquids, there are many types of consciousness,” he says.

He goes on to show how the particular properties of consciousness might arise from the physical laws that govern our universe. And he explains how these properties allow physicists to reason about the conditions under which consciousness arises and how we might exploit it to better understand why the world around us appears as it does.