Extramission
I’ve recently started thinking of consciousness as The Living Thing—and myself as a kind of spore growing out of it. Not in the way science might one day dissect or measure, but in the way we intuitively sense something true before we can prove it. I suspect that The Ether is real—and that it is consciousness.
Having a thought is not something I do, but something that happens to me. A thought occurs to me. So where was it, just before I became aware of it? It wasn't sitting in a file folder in my brain. It came from outside—not in a place, but in a field. The brain isn't a storage unit; it’s a sensory receiver. Damage it, and the signal gets fuzzy. But the source, the signal itself, isn’t in the brain. It’s somewhere else.
The Speaker in the Shack
When I was a little boy, I would experiment on whatever was lying around. One day, after my dad retired an old tube radio, I took the speaker he’d removed and studied it. Two wires were still attached. I wondered what would happen if I touched them to the ends of a battery.
I only had a D cell from a dead flashlight. But I gave it a try.
I had sound—just static—but it responded when I touched the wires to the poles. I watched the speaker pulse—out from the magnet, then back in. That simple movement sparked something in me.
We had a kind of guard shack near the road—something my dad built so we’d have shelter waiting for the school bus on rainy days. It had windows on all sides and even a glass door. Inside, he’d added a little shelf, imagining we’d do homework there while we waited. We never really used it for that—but we were the only kids with a “security station” at the end of a 500-foot driveway.
One day, I brought the speaker and the battery up to the shack. I needed privacy for my experiment. Dragging the wire across the battery pole gave me sustained static. I hoped—genuinely hoped—that a voice would come through. That someone, or something, would speak to me in the hiss. Of course, it never did. Eventually, I gave up.
Still, even now, when I hear static, I wonder if there’s a message in it.
Tuning In
Years later, I owned an old tube amplifier. Sometimes, if someone keyed a strong CB radio mic nearby, their voice would bleed through the amp. Just for a few seconds—but it was always a shock.
That moment in Poltergeist—the little girl sitting in front of a scrambled TV screen, listening to voices no one else could hear—has always stuck with me. There’s something haunting about it. Something that feels almost true.
Scientists have studied cosmic static for decades. That background hum—the microwave echo of the universe—has given us clues about what’s out there, just beyond what we can see or feel. I believe there’s far more information surrounding us than we’re tuned in to receive.
What we call “high intelligence” might really just be high fidelity—better tuning. A brain with better resolution.
Back in the guard shack, all I had was a speaker and a single, simple power source. I was surrounded by signals I couldn’t decode—not because they weren’t there, but because I didn’t have the right receiver.
Signals, Not Storage
That’s how I think about learning now—not as filling the brain with facts, but as refining the receiver. Not adding more books to a shelf, but sharpening the dial.
Some scientists talk about consciousness emerging from structures like microtubules in the brain. Others speak in terms of quantum phenomena. Sometimes I listen to those conversations, and they pass right through me like static. It’s not because my brain is broken—it’s just not tuned to that frequency yet.
A brain that hasn’t been prepared can’t receive certain signals. But the signals are there.
Early radio receivers were big, delicate boxes filled with glowing tubes. Tuning them was an art. But if you found the right frequency, you could hear the world. Music. News. Entire dramas.
Over time, radios got smaller, but the signals got clearer. Bandwidth widened. The signal-to-noise ratio improved. Human brains have evolved in a similar way. Developing critical thinking in one area seems to improve the brain’s overall receptivity. We start picking up more stations.
The ancient Book of Daniel describes a future marked by travel and an explosion of knowledge. I think we’re living in that time.
Consciousness as a Field
Consciousness isn’t a head filled with thoughts. It’s not memory banks and data points. It’s more like a field—something ever-present, surrounding us, waiting to be received. Our brains are organic machines built to unscramble signals. Every human is forever dialing in, trying to catch a clearer station.
The signal doesn’t belong to us. It’s out there, everywhere, all the time.
If you’re very smart, it might just mean you’ve tuned in better—your receiver is picking up more complex, more coherent data. Right next to you, someone else might hear only static. But that doesn’t mean the message isn’t there. It just means their receiver isn’t ready.
The data is available. The music is playing.
I just can’t hear it yet.
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