Hypertime

The earlier papers in this series laid out a conceptual framework that makes it possible to speak more concretely about physical reality and the place of consciousness within it.

The universe described here is a consistent whole. Within it, conscious beings have a physical point of view, in the same way an astronomer has a physical vantage on the sky. “Point of view” here does not mean opinion. It means location, perspective, and constraint. Where you are matters to what you can observe and how you interpret it.

This whole is called hypertime. Because it is intended as a description of the whole, it aims to integrate earlier scientific and spiritual intuitions under a single unifying paradigm, without treating prior work as disposable.

This is part of the Reciprocality Series.

The Structure of Hypertime

Hypertime is described as a four-dimensional sphere. That statement is meant literally. It is not “three dimensions plus time.” It is four spatial dimensions, with the familiar three-plus-one appearance arising from how perception flattens what it cannot directly represent.

A useful analogy is a two-dimensional relative of hypertime: a circle as a full two-dimensional region, inhabited by beings who experience only a one-dimensional “edge” that changes. A being at one point experiences the “world” flattened one way, while a being at another point experiences it flattened differently. When they move, their experienced “one dimension” changes. They are moving in two dimensions without recognizing it. A physics built on “one space dimension and one time dimension” would then become entangled in apparent exchanges between space and time, and it would find “least time” or “least action” principles mysterious rather than structural.

By analogy, in hypertime, different locations impose different flattenings of the same four-dimensional reality into the locally experienced structure of perception.

Bennett Exchange in Hypertime

At the center of the hypersphere is described a dense, tangled knot of photon “strings” that expanded outward and, in doing so, defined the space of the hypersphere. The central region is described not as an abstract mathematical singularity, but as a physically existing configuration with its own internal consistency.

The photon strings in the knot are directed, tending to disentangle as one moves outward. The further from the center, the less entangled the photons are, and the more they behave as independent, unknotted trajectories.

The boundary is described as uninteresting: a region of fully unentangled photons, beyond which extending the description yields no new structure. In that sense, the practical “radius” is where the last meaningful entanglement disappears.

What is remarkable in the proposed picture is that the early tangles are arranged such that when they untangle, the information in the knots is retained as direction and speed in the resulting photon trajectories. The model asserts a strict adjacency of states: each state has only one possible preceding and following state.

Explicit Information Representations in Hypertime

Near the center, knots are complex. Complexity is built by tying knots with knots, as though plaiting cords that are already plaited. Further from the center, knots are generally simpler. When information is represented as knots, the knots can be reused as building blocks for further structure. When information is represented only as individual directions and speeds far from the center, that additive construction cannot occur between isolated photons.

The model treats the total information content as constant across radius, while its form changes between “active” structure and “kit” form, awaiting reassembly into structured knots.

Self Referential Information Structures

When knots are built from knots, self-reference becomes internal to the constructed structure. All knots contain information; knots made of knots contain information about information. Two consequences are emphasized.

First, stacked information allows greater density: more data can be held using fewer photons than a purely linear representation would require.

Second, stacked knots necessarily encode their own formation path. If a definition relies on earlier concepts, then the structure of the understanding implicitly records that dependency. The example given is that one cannot understand an “each-way bet” without already understanding simpler odds, and the later knowledge carries the imprint of that earlier dependency.

Fractal Recurrence in Hypertime

As complex knots unravel, the “thrashing” of the process can cause nearby photon strings to knot again for a time. These re-formed knots may be simple repetitions, or, in rarer cases, reconstructions that resemble center-ward structures.

As complexity increases, the likelihood of a complex structure appearing far from the center without being composed of elements that were authentically together closer to the center becomes increasingly small. From the edge looking inward, the model expects a mixture: simple emergent structures assembled from fragments of many deeper structures, and occasional complex reconstructions that resemble single “upline” forms.

The Mandelbrot set is offered as an analogy: at its periphery, miniature copies of the whole appear at many scales, suggesting recurrence of form within form.

Subjective Perception of Duration

Because the information at each radius is treated as constant, and because it can exist either explicitly or in “kit” form, the model allows causality to be described in either direction when seen from the larger hypertime perspective.

Within this, self-referential structures (knots of knots) experience a preferred direction because they can only compare the accumulation of complexity. They cannot directly incorporate information they do not have. In that sense, “duration” is tied to how stacked structures experience change in their own internal reference frames.

The Purpose of Hypertime

The proposed purpose of hypertime is to exploit subjective duration so that a central “brain” gains awareness of itself. The narrative asserts that the brain first moves into a domain where it has total control because nothing exists there but itself. It then configures itself so that its decay trajectories have the properties of a Bennett machine and “blows itself to bits.”

The construction is claimed to be symmetric in physical description: a space could be seen as spontaneously forming a brain just as much as a brain could be seen as exploding into a space. The asserted asymmetry is subjective: in the recreative direction, reforming information structures experience becoming more complex, while there is no matching subjective experience of the “blowing up.” In that framing, continuity of memory and the vote of subjective experience resolves “what happens” as coming into existence.

Multifractal Autopoiesis

On the arrow of time we ordinarily perceive, large-scale self-organization appears as spontaneous “coolings” or emergent order across cosmological and biological scales. The model suggests these can occur simultaneously, and that intermediate scales of self-organization may exist between individual organisms and the entire universe.

Aggregate forms are offered as examples: the planetary ecosystem maintaining itself far from chemical equilibrium, and the human body viewed as a system composed of vast numbers of living cells.

In this model, the mechanism of self-organization involves what appear, from our perspective, as stochastic coolings: exchanges of energy for a copy of a system’s own future informational state. In hypertime terms, these events are framed as “fractal back echoes” that look acausal to us but are causal on the creative arrow.

Punctuated Equilibrium and Magic

The perceived arrow of time is treated as an effect of how self-referential structures can only know themselves as growing. The model then asserts that the only ultimate source of structure is the end state, and that minds can experience “self-creation” by aligning themselves with richer, more interconnected understanding grounded in facts rather than slogans.

In that framing, the strange subjective experience arises that we are “fore-ordained” to become what we choose to become. The argument is that if a developed mind arranges itself so it can only be the decay product of certain future states, those future states are constrained to occur.

The text then shifts to “magic” as a reported practical reality in many traditions, described in two styles: first, becoming the thing you intend to be so that external structure follows; and second, assembling strong ingredients and allowing a coherent outcome to form, such as a successful restaurant or a band.

For clarity, the paper notes the author’s claim of having used both techniques at the outset of the Reciprocality Project, while also stating an intention not to develop the topic further within what remains a physics-oriented paper.

“But now we have broken the sky.”