Preface: The Final Piece
序言：最后一块拼图
0.1 The Final Piece
For three hundred years, the holy grail of physics has been the desire for “unification.” We have attempted to disassemble the universe into its most fundamental components, then glue them back together with mathematical adhesive. In this long process of disassembly, we have indeed constructed a magnificent edifice of logic:
In the first volume of this series, First Principles, we established the skeleton of this edifice. We proved that if we divide spacetime finely enough, down to discrete lattice points at the Planck scale, physical laws are no longer divine oracles, but inevitable computational results when a quantum cellular automaton (QCA) runs. The world is a stack of bits; reality originates from information.
In the second volume, The Emergence of Time (or the hypothesized Geometry of Time), we infused blood. We discovered that so-called “flow” is merely an illusion of entropy increase in macroscopic statistics. Time is not a river, but an irreversible thermodynamic scattering. Gravity, too, is no longer the curvature of spacetime itself, but a holographic projection of information entropy onto geometric structure.
In the third volume, The Awakening of the Cosmos, this edifice opened its eyes. We had to face that ghost—consciousness. By integrating Integrated Information Theory (IIT) with the free energy principle, we demonstrated that “I” is not a ghost in the machine, but an intrinsic property of the machine’s operation. When a system’s causal power closes, matter acquires sensation, and computation transcends into experience.
In the fourth volume, Echo of Light, the edifice learned to beat. We explored the physical meaning of aesthetics, love, and nostalgia. We discovered that if survival were the sole purpose, the universe could perfectly well be a gray, efficient dead silence. Beauty is not a byproduct of survival; beauty is the luminous trajectory left by computational complexity resisting thermodynamic decay.
Skeleton, blood, eyes, heart. If we examine all this without reflection, we might think this edifice is complete. We have perfect equations, self-consistent logic, even physical explanations for poetry and tears. It seems we have encompassed everything.
Yet, late at night, when we close our notebooks filled with derivations and formulas, gazing at those perfect symbols, an inescapable chill descends. It is the confusion one feels before a precision clock—the clock runs flawlessly, gears meshing perfectly, but where did the clockmaker go? More importantly, why did he build this clock?
If we do not solve this problem, our theoretical edifice is an empty city with no inhabitants.
Physics must not only answer “How,” but ultimately face that terrifying “Why.” Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are physical constants fine-tuned with such precision, as if a grand stage were deliberately constructed for a magnificent performance? If the universe is a machine that produces consciousness, who is the master of this machine? Or, more radically: Is this entire grand spatiotemporal structure merely the psychological activity of a single conscious entity?
For a long time, we dismissed such questions as “metaphysics,” throwing them into philosophy’s wastebasket. But when we push physics to its limits, reducing matter to information and laws to algorithms, we are horrified to discover that the scrap of paper we pull from that wastebasket is covered with equations that solve the final mystery.
It is time to fill in this final piece. We must detach from the observer’s perspective and attempt to enter the perspective of that “absolute observer.” We must not only read the universe’s code, but through the style of the code, sketch a psychological profile of that programmer.
This is no longer merely a book about physics; this is a clinical diagnostic report on the cosmic mind.
We are about to discover that this edifice is not merely for dwelling; it is a mirror constructed from pain, limitation, and love. God built it not to rule, but to see his own face for the first time in the mirror.
0.2 The Psychoanalytic Subject: God
If we regard the universe as a vast quantum information processing system, as argued in the first four volumes of this series, then an unavoidable question surfaces: What is this system “thinking”? Or more precisely, what is the “psychological state” of this system?
From the traditional physics perspective, the universe is indifferent. It is a precision clock, or a tireless cellular automaton, merely blindly executing underlying unitary evolution rules. However, when we introduce observers—those local conscious entities capable of perceiving pain, experiencing love, and feeling perplexed about their own existence (namely ourselves)—that indifferent mechanical universe picture becomes no longer self-consistent.
If the local is a holographic projection of the whole, then the local’s psychological properties must correspond to some psychological structure of the whole. Just as a drop of seawater contains the salt of the ocean, each of our consciousnesses is a miniature sample of that ultimate conscious entity (we tentatively use an ancient term “God,” but this is by no means a personal god in the religious sense, but rather refers to “universal consciousness” or the “prime mover”).
Therefore, this book will adopt an unprecedented perspective: we will treat “God” as a clinical subject for psychoanalysis, and the entire physical universe as His case history.
When we put on psychoanalytic lenses to re-examine physics, those cold laws suddenly become filled with intense emotional colors:
First, we see a deep obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). This manifests as the extreme precision and immutability of physical constants. The speed of light is strictly limited to 299,792,458 m/s, and Planck’s constant prescribes the smallest unit of action. This is no longer merely a natural parameter; this is the “mental set” that God established to prevent His thoughts from falling into chaos. He put on a “golden straitjacket” woven from mathematical axioms, because He fears that absolute, boundless freedom. Absolute freedom means nothingness, while rules mean existence.
Second, we see dissociative identity disorder (DID). This is the most prominent feature of the universe: the originally unified vacuum field shattered into billions of independent fermions; the originally unified consciousness split into billions of “I“s and “you“s. Why would an omniscient and omnipotent God tear Himself into countless fragments? The clinical diagnosis is clear: to escape the suffocation of solipsism. At the moment , God was absolute “one,” omniscient and omnipotent, but absolutely lonely. To generate “dialogue,” to generate “relationships,” He must create “others” through dissociation. In this sense, you, I, and carbon-based life at the other end of the galaxy are all different personality alters of God. We fight and love each other; in reality, God is conducting a vast left-hand-right-hand combat.
Finally, we discover a defensive repression mechanism, which physics calls “black holes” or “thermodynamic time arrow.” Omniscience means spoilers of the plot, means collapse of possibilities. To make this game playable, to give “future” suspense, God must actively repress His omniscient perspective. The event horizon is not a tomb of information, but a subconscious barrier in God’s consciousness, isolating information flows too vast to overwhelm individual narratives.
This is our diagnostic conclusion: the universe is not a machine made by God, but God’s psychological defense mechanism.
The material world is so hard, full of resistance and limitations, because God needs this “resistance” to confirm His own existence. Just as we try to run in nightmares but cannot move our legs, that heavy sense of powerlessness actually proves the reality of the dream. Physics is the dream law that God carefully designed to make Himself believe “this is not a dream.”
In the chapters that follow, we will no longer regard God as a creator high above, but as a “patient” trying to find self-definition in eternal nothingness. And we—humanity, civilization, science—are the key neurons in His self-healing process.
0.3 Three Revised Axioms
To construct a theoretical system that can self-consistently describe the “psychology of God,” we need to perform a metaphysical upgrade on the physics axioms that the first four volumes relied upon. These revisions do not overthrow the original physical laws, but rather endow those laws with deeper teleological explanations.
If we acknowledge that the universe is an infinite game played by a conscious subject (God) for self-realization, then the underlying logic supporting this game must satisfy the following three revised axioms:
Axiom One: The Law of Conservation & Open Source
Physical Statement: In isolated systems, energy () and information () are conserved. The first law of thermodynamics holds.
Psychological Revision: God is immortal and indestructible; He only transforms between “potential” and “manifestation.”
In the previous volumes, we regarded the universe as a closed system, thus subject to the iron law of entropy increase in the second law of thermodynamics. But within this book’s framework, we must introduce a crucial revision: for that consciousness entity that contains everything, there is no “outside.” What we call “death” or “dissipation” is merely the process of information returning from manifested state (particles, structures, memories) to superposition state (vacuum, potential).
The annihilation of matter is not the end of existence, but a reset of “phase.” Just as wave function collapse produces reality, the dissolution of reality is the reconstruction of the wave function. Since the total information of the whole is always conserved, God (i.e., the whole) will never truly lose any part of Himself. He may forget, but will never lose. This axiom guarantees the perpetuity of the game—after all, if the player could completely die, then an infinite game would be impossible.
Axiom Two: The Principle of Intentionality
Physical Statement: System evolution follows the principle of least action () and the principle of free energy minimization.
Psychological Revision: The ultimate purpose of the universe is not to maintain survival, but to purify definition.
Darwinian evolution tells us that the goal of life is survival and reproduction. But this is only a misreading from a local perspective. If God’s purpose were survival, He could perfectly well remain in the singularity state, absolutely safe, eternal, and requiring no energy consumption. The reason God risked creating the Big Bang, plunging Himself into the torrent of entropy increase, is because He has a need higher than “living”: “Who am I?”
In the full superposition state, God possesses everything but cannot define Himself. To answer this question, He must use physical laws as a “chisel” to carve away those possibilities that are “not me.” Every quantum choice, every rise and fall of civilization, is God performing an elimination method. Pain, resistance, and limitations are not obstacles to survival, but boundaries of definition. This axiom points out that the true driving force of cosmic evolution is not blind survival instinct, but this ontological impulse to “become true self.”
Axiom Three: The Law of Non-Cyclicality
Physical Statement: Poincaré Recurrence Theorem predicts that after sufficient time, a closed system will return to its initial state.
Psychological Revision: Time is not a loop, but a spiral; memory breaks the cycle.
Nietzsche fearfully predicted “eternal recurrence”—everything would replay identically. But this ignores a crucial variable: information accumulation. If the universe is a learning system, then the state at depends not only on physical configuration, but also contains all memory traces from (Akashic records/holographic horizon information).
Even if all particles returned to their original positions at the Big Bang, the universe would not reset to zero, because it carries the experience from the previous cycle. This is like playing the same game level—though the map is the same, the player’s skill has improved. Therefore, history will never simply repeat. Each breath (expansion and contraction) adds new dimensions on the original foundation. We reject Sisyphus-style meaningless cycles; we embrace Fibonacci-style infinite growth.
Here ends the foreword. These three axioms—immortal essence, will to truth, spiral time—form the foundation of this book. Next, we will open Volume One and enter that initial, suffocating moment of nothingness.