Works such as The Verity Key (published 2012) make reference to something called the Great Fractal, a concept expounded upon in an essay published here in 2017. Great Fractal Theory is a subset of a wider philosophy known as Elementalism. This essay provides a basic introduction.

Great Fractal Theory starts with a simple premise: that consciousness is the prima materia. Consciousness was the first thing to exist, and everything else comes after and is dependent upon it. Consciousness is more fundamental than both time and therefore does not need to have a beginning, an end, a cause, or a final destiny. It simply is.

Everything else that exists falls into the category of ‘the contents of consciousness’. Here we find the metaphysical world (that which Plato referred to as the ‘World of Forms’), and the physical or material world (that which we’re used to calling ‘Earth’).

The material world is not truly real, despite the fact that it appears very real. In fact, it has been dreamed up by consciousness, in the Great Act of Creation. Consciousness is therefore the creator of the material world, in the same way that it creates the worlds we navigate in our dreams. It is the stage upon which the play on life takes place.

The material world is most accurately understood as not being a place, then, but rather a matrix-like series of self-similar sets of perceptions that manifest in conscious awareness. Consciousness perceives a field of impressions that collectively create the illusion that we are bodies living in a material world, as opposed to consciousness dreaming it up. As such, we appear to be ‘living’ rather than simply experiencing.

The essence of Great Fractal Theory is that all of the possible fields of impressions that consciousness could ever perceive are related to each other by way of a fractal matrix. This matrix, known as the Great Fractal, contains every emotion, every thought, every desire and every sensory impression that could ever possibly manifest in conscious awareness.

Our lives do not involve being bipedal fleshsuits moving around on a rock in space, but rather being fragments of consciousness navigating through an eternal and ever-changing Great Fractal of self-similar fields of sensory impressions.

The easiest way to conceptualise the Great Fractal is to think of one’s own life.

Consciousness is, right now, experiencing not only your current life but also all the possible gaps in between your birth and your death. Your own personal fragment of consciousness may be living right now, in 2020 A.D., but other fragments of consciousness are living out every possible moment of your life, simultaneously.

By “every possible moment”, imagine that your life was divided into a billion or so chunks, each corresponding to a second or two of awareness. Think that all billion of these fragments of consciousness are living their own lives, unaware of the presence of the others. Then think that each of these billion fragments could themselves be divided into a billion fragments.

Now imagine these quintillion or so lives, each separated by one or two nanoseconds, rolling from birth to death like freight carriages on a railway. One ends and one begins every few nanoseconds, and follows the exact path of the life that you are experiencing right now, past and future. This is what Nietzsche meant by eternal recurrence: your life is lived again, by another fragment of consciousness, forever.

Now imagine a parallel streak made up of lives of people who are of the other gender to you. Their lives are otherwise exactly the same, only they came into the world female instead of male (or vice-versa). These lives would have followed an entirely different path on account of that they would have had different instincts and would have been treated differently, but a life they would have had.

This parallel streak of lives can also be divided into a quintillion separate existences. Now takes this dual streak of lives, and change another facet from masculine to feminine or vice-versa. If you are rich, imagine another dual streak of lives that is poor. If you are short, imagine another streak of lives that is tall. If you are white, imagine black etc.

Every possible way that a human life can differ from another is another dimension of the Great Fractal. This number of dimensions is close to infinite – there are as many different dimensions of this Great Fractal as there are ways to distinguish one human life from another. So not only does every moment of every human life exist in the Great Fractal, but so does every moment of every possible human life.

If we say, for simplicity’s sake, that there are a hundred different dimensions along which human lives could differ, that would mean that the Great Fractal contained at least one quintillion to the power of a hundred different human lives in it – a number that defies comprehension.

All of these lives are being lived right now.

On top of this has to be added not only the lives that are possible according to the specific world that has manifested to us (i.e. Earth), but all the possible lives in all possible worlds. These possible worlds might also differ from each other over a hundred different dimensions.

This would mean that the number of human lives being lived right now is (at least) one quintillion to the power of a hundred to the power of a hundred. This number would cover all the fragments of consciousness that are right now experiencing a human-like life in an Earth-like world, somewhere in the Great Fractal.

Trying to understand this is enough to understand that the Great Fractal is humming with consciousness.

On top of this, we could add all of the non-human lives being experienced by consciousness right now. There’s no reason, other than anthropomorphic conceit, to believe that only human beings are conscious. Once it’s realised that consciousness is the prima materia and not a phenomenon of the brain, it becomes entirely possible that all other animals, indeed even insects and trees, are conscious like we are.

If we assume, for simplicity’s sake, that the number of dimensions along which life can vary is a hundred, then the number of different lives being experienced by consciousness right now is at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 ^ 100 ^ 100 ^ 100. This is a nonsense number as there’s no way that a human mind can comprehend it. However, our failure to comprehend it is the glory of God.

In sum, anything that can possibly be perceived by consciousness lies somewhere in the Great Fractal. All moments of all lives of all possible creatures in all possible worlds are contained within the Great Fractal, to be experienced by consciousness eternally. Your life is simply an infinitely small fragment of this incomprehensibly vast whole.

Getting what you want out of life is not, as most think, a matter of manipulating and dominating the material world until it accords with your will. Making your dreams come true is simply a matter of navigating your consciousness to the part of the Great Fractal in which those dreams are experienced. This is, however, a topic for another essay.

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If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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