Beginner's introduction

Here is a rudimentary, overall, "big picture" impression of Chris Langan's Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU).

By definition, reality contains everything that exists. There is nothing outside reality. This means that its structure, the rules it obeys, and indeed its very existence, cannot have been determined by anything external to it. It follows that reality contains all of the conditions necessary for its own formation. Its mere possibility is enough to ensure that it generates itself. It is sort of like a self-executing algorithm that generates the mind in which the algorithm itself is known.

Although this mind (God's mind) sits in knowledge of itself in an unchanging, eternal way, it contains within it all of the processes required for it to refine itself into existence out of nothingness. As such, consciousness is stratified: the bottom stratum is the all-knowing mind of God, and within this all-knowing mind of God are contained all of the more superficial strata of consciousness that are inherent in the creation process. In other words, God is aware of all the steps in its own creation. However, from the vantage point of these more superficial strata, the universe appears as a physical entity unfolding in physical space. Our human minds are pieces of these more superficial strata. To us, things look like they are still unfolding.

And recall that our conscious minds are contained within God's consciousness. As such, we retain the creative power and freedom of God on a scale that is localized in time and space. We can choose to act in a way that facilitates the execution of the self-creating algorithm that creates God, or we can choose to act in a way that is not useful to this end, which is known as the "telos" of this particular reality. If we choose to act in a way that is in line with the telos, those parts of our minds that match the mind of God get preserved and we basically move closer to the all-knowing substratum, or the consciousness of God. If we act against the telos, what happens may be that those elements of our minds that do not match the mind of God get recycled endlessly until they properly refine themselves. The eternal unchanging nature of the overall God consciousness is preserved despite our free choices because the system continually adjusts itself in such a way that even though it is changing internally it remains eternal overall.

In short, reality is a self-creating, self-refining informational system which, due to its form, cannot NOT exist. Even if there is nothingness, this system will exist and know itself and all of the localized conscious minds within its creation process will experience its informational structure as real, physical, etc.

For a more detailed overview, see Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe. For sources, see CTMU sources.