3. AN ABSTRACT WORLD
First of all – before we get started with anything at all – there is one thing you must understand, otherwise you will immediately become confused.
What follows, then, is a series of precisely formulated points about how the world works. You will hear about emergence and attractor dynamics and much else. So perhaps you are thinking that this is some kind of "physical" theory? That it is about how particles, atoms and objects of every kind first come into being and then begin to interact in a complex interplay?
This is something else.
The physical world is as described. There are "objects" there. Things. This theory, however, says something radically different. It claims that objects, things, atoms, air, water, stars and coffee cups do not exist.
Everything consists of experiences in your mind.
That is why this is an idealist theory. It says that there is an abstract universe that is the origin of physical experiences. Plato said the same thing. There is an idea of a horse before the experience of that same horse can arise. We sit inside a cave and see only the shadow images on the walls of what comes streaming in with the Sun from outside, was Plato's image.
Here we are going to talk about what is outside Plato's cave.
The world of ideas.
How do ideas work? Thoughts? How do they become the experience of something material and an entire world, exactly as we experience it? It is a colossal question.
No one has ever described such mechanisms. But here you will find it. The Mechanism itself. The workings of what comes before the world that we and physics believe is "real".
This is strange, so let me try a little longer to talk you into it.
Your feelings, the experience of holding a coffee cup in your hand, the smell of the coffee, the taste, the sunlight coming through the window – everything, absolutely everything you experience as physical, material, real – is precisely that: EXPERIENCES in your mind. Nothing exists apart from this.
It is an exceptionally unfamiliar thought for the vast majority of people. It takes a long time to get used to it, even when you have understood, in purely logical and technical terms, that this is actually how it must be.
Traditional science has not yet discovered this. Scientists work with physical things and phenomena. That is why they cannot get all the way to the bottom of how the universe works. Or rather; they have got all the way to the bottom as far as it is at all possible when you study the "things" – the experiences – and then go further and further down towards the very smallest. There, everything dissolves. You encounter a "quantum field", and that is not itself anything physical – as far as science has established. They are right.
At the very bottom, "particles" simply pop up from ... a purely abstract, mathematical "construction" – a "field", which is really just a collection of information. And information has no enticing aroma of coffee.
At the very bottom there is a number. The fine-structure constant. And physics has found this number – both theoretically and through measurements. But then it stops. You can go no further. Because this is the point where the world of experiences – the physical world – meets the world of ideas. And that world is made of KNOWING.
Such a transition between two different "domains", or paradigms if you prefer – is called a horizon.
So you are probably wondering what an "abstract domain" actually is? Well, words are abstract. Music, colours, poems, mathematics, ethics, humour, TV debate programmes, thoughts. Abstract. If you think about it, EVERYTHING is actually abstract BEFORE it is experienced. Language exists in abstract form before you read the words on the paper or hear them as sound waves. For example. The house you live in was ideas in the architect's head. Those responsible for building it had plans and knowledge.
There are ideas and knowledge behind everything.
Next question: How can we all experience the same world, if it is only ideas in your own mind?
We all have our private experience. The world looks a little different to each of us – partly because we are in different places and each have our own unique perspective in this "world of mental representations", but also because we each have our own mind. You have your thoughts, I have mine. You experience blue cheese as stinking, I love it.
We experience things differently – but also in the same way. You see the dog over there. I see it too. We interpret it a little differently (dangerous/cute), but the dog is demonstrably standing in front of both of us. This means one thing: We have both collective and private experiences – simultaneously.
How can that add up? How can something be only in my mind, and at the same time be shared with you?
And it does not stop there. You do not just see the dog – you can also act. You stroke it, it reacts, I see it reacting. Your action arises in your mind. But its effect is clearly part of my experience too. How can something that originates in one mind become part of the reality of another?
At this point most people lose the thread, because how could anything like that be possible?
Well, you will have it explained. The key word is dissociation. But now I am getting ahead of myself, you must read the points in order, otherwise understanding breaks down.
So hold on to this as you now go through all the points that describe the whole thing. Do not picture "things", picture thoughts – and what those thoughts are founded on; what you know – KNOWING. The universe is really KNOWING and this is the story of how KNOWING works – and is experienced.
Formalism first, then the consequences
Chapter 5 with its seven points constitutes the theory's ontological foundation. Every word here has been weighed with the utmost care and cross-checked through many rounds by both ChatGPT and Claude in their most powerful versions at the time the theory was formulated (April-September 2026). AI has also been used to formalise The Mechanism, because I myself am neither a mathematician nor a physicist. The formalisation is separate from the explanatory text – which, for its part, is hopefully readable – although the primary focus in the explanation too is technical, scientific precision.
In the chapters that follow, I address various aspects and consequences of the theory. These are written in a loose, narrative form. I do not try there to meet every criticism or respond to every view others might have. This is my understanding of what the theory entails; how I believe the theory explains the nature and workings of the world.
And the AIs still agree. I have grounds for saying what I say – once the formal premises in chapter 5 are given.
AI has therefore played a role in shaping what you have before you here. But believe me, this is my text, my theory. I had already formulated it in broad outline in the book "The Experiencer", which was published in May 2022. Practically all the main insights are already there, long before AI, but not yet in precise form.
During the work on this new book, I have sometimes asked AI, mainly ChatGPT, to try to find a logical, structural path through the extensive material – in a sense, to translate it into science. This was what led to the first version of the Horizon Equation. The equation itself was identical to the one you will find here, but it was justified in a "traditionally scientific" way, using laws and mathematics from information technology, system dynamics and physics in many forms.
My inner picture was thus translated into something AI could calculate, and with it we matched the fine-structure constant in its latest CODATA 2022 version. That was sensational in itself, and at the beginning of June 2026 I published (as a book with an ISBN) a first version of the theory on this basis. Then a couple of months passed and I discovered an enormous error that brought everything crashing down.
ChatGPT and Claude had jointly, through a ping-pong process with me attempting to act as moderator, constructed a physical and mathematical edifice that was pure fabrication. It seemed so plausible – logically, structurally and mathematically credible. It was discovered because I began asking critical questions – for of course I had to understand to the very bottom what had been created.
But it was a castle in the air. It did not match my inner picture of The Mechanism. It was not my knowledge. But the hallucinations the AIs came up with were based on my knowledge. And the equation still matched, through a contrived, intermediate edifice faithful to physics that was demonstrably wrong! It was a strange situation.
For the result was still a sensation: a purely geometrical equation with only one known physical quantity; Landauer's constant (which is the smallest unit of measurement for information) – and it matched this mythical number $\alpha$.
I had no choice. On 12 September 2026 I threw over five months of intense work and enormous amounts of text into the wastepaper basket and began the construction work again. This time I knew that the Horizon Equation was both possible and probably also correct – but it was not correctly justified at all and lacked a valid ontological explanation.
But I had the explanation, it was simply not yet connected to the equation.
The entire edifice presented to you here is now the real one and comes from an inner picture that began unfolding when I was around ten or eleven years old. It has become steadily richer, more nuanced, precise and complete over fifty years. In 2018 the whole picture forced its way to the surface. In 2022 I put the basic outline into book form. And over three weeks from 12 September I reconstructed the whole thing from the bottom up – this time as I actually see The Mechanism and the world.
The method has been this: I have given ChatGPT my informal but precise explanation of what happens point by point through the Experience Circle. We have struggled to see it from two perspectives simultaneously; through FOCUS, which is what passes through the events, and also an "unfolded system perspective", which is the only one the two AIs involved can understand and formalise. AI cannot be used to convey "inner truths" – there I am the sole authority.
Then we have played ping-pong again. I have given my account, ChatGPT has structured it and attempted to formalise it. Claude has been used as a tough final adjudicator. Sometimes it has been the other way round. We have gone back and forth in this way countless times. The total material from April 2026 (when the work on the theory began) up to October 2026 amounts to many thousands of A4 pages. It is available for scrutiny and curious eyes – get in touch! I intend to gather it into separate PDFs that can be downloaded freely.
What I have not yet said, but which you probably already understand, is that the second round of painstaking construction from the bottom up and back to a correct description of the Experience Circle and thus also the Horizon Equation – succeeded! It took only three weeks, because this time I could lead the work myself and use AI as a checker – not as a provider of premises and an authority.
I therefore have a thing or two to say about the use of AI in serious theoretical work. Along the way I also developed various frameworks and instruction sets to reduce hallucination, assumptions, the concealment of critical premises etc. The framework was also necessary because AI operates within today's scientific paradigm – reductionism. My theory runs in the opposite causal direction. KNOWING comes first, then "materialisation" takes place through the EC. All causal logic runs in reverse in The Mechanism.
I have therefore forced ChatGPT and Claude to think like me, while at the same time translating it into traditional physics. It has required patience, because the engines have constantly fallen back into their default mode of thinking. I have brought them into line, repeated the instructions, explained again, and they have collapsed again. Hundreds of times. This is what it is like to work with this technology in 2026.
The result you have before you is therefore MY THEORY, checked and verified by the most robust intelligence I have had access to. For I have not managed to get any living scientists to look at what I am presenting. I have tried, both nationally and internationally. They simply do not reply, primarily because I myself am not a researcher with a formal background. I am not one of them.
Moreover, I assume they do not believe that what I am presenting is "serious". No one has so far understood $\alpha$, much less presented a coherent idealist-physical theory. I am probably seen as a crank. Read the book and judge for yourself.
Then there is a third factor: There are a great many actual "cranks" out there. We are almost drowning in all sorts of versions of a "Theory of Everything". Serious, highly trained researchers know that ninety per cent of them are pure nonsense. The remainder may have a few points that could be worth looking at, but who has the time and energy to venture into this jungle? No one, it turns out. And that is fine.
But I myself now DEMAND to be taken seriously. The Mechanism is something else. It stands. It holds together and everything is justified in detail. The mechanisms presented are universal. And the provisional end result is $\alpha$. In the work that follows, I am extending the bridge to electromagnetism and the rest of physics (ref).
So "publication" will have to take this form instead. And time will have to come to my aid. At the time of writing I am 65 years old and do not expect to see any "breakthrough" in my lifetime. That is fine, because I have no aim beyond spreading the knowledge. I have no colleagues to impress. I am not seeking the professorship everyone is drooling over. I do not want prizes or attention. I only want to be heard and understood, because the insights I am presenting – and the description of the whole system that follows from them – are without equal.
The world simply cannot miss out on what you are being presented with here, is my immodest opinion. No one else is in a position to formulate The Mechanism, because it originates in my subjective, inner, direct experience. It does not merely solve all the philosophical Gordian knots. It extends physics into a domain that has hitherto been inaccessible to scientific investigation. And – most importantly – the knowledge being passed on here also has the potential to solve humanity's countless, extremely serious problems and shows how everything must be understood and organised differently if we are to survive in a stable way.
And perhaps most importantly for you as an individual reader: You will learn what you and your life really are. What exists beyond what is right in front of your nose, where suffering and grief originate and what happens when you die. For your consciousness does not cease – ever. It simply enters into new mental representations of being other creatures and "identities" of every kind. The Mechanism is the ultimate medicine for existential fear.
This is "the red pill" from the film The Matrix. You have been warned. People who read The Experiencer from 2022 and got in touch to give their opinion recommended that I put a warning on the book cover even then. The book – if you understand it – will change your view of your own life and striving. Not everyone is ready for that.
But there is nothing dangerous here. I am simply presenting my version of the theory of "Life, the universe and everything" (from the book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams). The answer is not "42". The mechanism behind the calculation is the answer, to put it informally and approximately. Here, then, is my candidate for The Mechanism, which yields the answer "THE ALL".
First an overview
I will not throw you straight into the technical explanation of the Experience Circle and its Horizon Equation.
First you will get an overview intended for everyone.
But you will probably have difficulty taking in even the overview. For the worldview itself and the way the universe works – including you – are and remain unfamiliar compared with everything you have been told. You were sent to school, crammed full of a narrative heavily supported by every conceivable researcher and discipline. This is a scientific tradition spanning many hundreds of years and a religious culture thousands of years old that are now to be overturned. You are woven into it and are now to be "unwoven" – set free.
I am not thereby saying that current religion or science is wrong. Not at all!
The religions are founded on truths. You will see in my texts that their origins are in many cases related. But humanity has distorted the message and exploited it for control, gain and power in every possible way.
Science, for its part, is OF COURSE right in everything that has been documented through analyses, experiments and verified theories.
It is simply not complete. The abstract side is missing. The reason for this, in turn, is that no one has managed to find a connection. Something that links thoughts and material objects – for example. Or feelings and quantum physics. Chess, food culture and town planning. Folk dancing, space travel and flocks of birds. And so on. I could give infinitely many examples.
Everything is governed by the same, single Mechanism.
Here, then, is the connection: the Experience Circle and its Horizon Equation – hereafter popularly referred to as EC/HE.
Enjoy your reading, now comes the overview.
