I’m not a very religious person, although I'm definitely not an all out atheist either. I’ve always had a sense that there is something else at play in my life and in the universe, whatever that may be and call it what you want.

This sense doesn't come from any profound personal experiences. It is simply a feeling that I’ve nearly always had. I say nearly always because, truth be told, I have dabbled in atheism. By that I mean, I’ve had phases where I started to believe there is just nothing. We’ve all likely wrestled with what the lack of evidence means and the many logical holes in the popular belief systems. What breaks me out of those phases is this sense. Just an intuitive sense that there is something more. Higher power feels like a good name for it since it doesn't bring to mind any particular ideology. I’d call it God, but that idea carries too much baggage for me and I don’t imagine this something else as a being. I imagine something unimaginable. Something that can’t be named without losing some of its essence. Something that can’t even be pondered as a whole.

A Higher Dimensions Analogy: Cliche, but useful.

It reminds me of the concept of contour lines, where you project slices of 3 dimensional surfaces onto a 2 dimensional plane. You may have seen this done on maps of areas with lots of elevation changes, but it can be done with any common surface. Imagine dipping a sphere into a plane at set intervals and recording what is touching the plane each time.

What you would see projected onto the plane is a series of concentric circles.

What’s interesting is that the same process can be brought into higher dimensions. We don’t know the whole reality of a 4 dimensional sphere, but we can imagine “dipping” a 4 sphere into 3 dimensional space at set intervals and recording what is touching 3 space at each phase. What you would see projected onto 3 space is a series of concentric spheres, spheres inside and outside of each other.

I don’t mean to make the point that higher physical dimensions have anything to do with spirituality, or that this higher power exists in higher dimensions. For me, this example is an analogy for how we try to understand something beyond comprehension using what little information we have in the existence we have. Perhaps this sense that I have is something like the projections from a 4 sphere, making concentric spheres onto the reality I know, but having a full existence beyond, that I don’t understand.

Trying to Define Randomness

The idea of randomness is sort of aloof and hard to pin down conceptually. The closest I’ve gotten to feeling like I understand what it means is by using the definition “that with no discernible pattern”, or you could say “something that is impossible to predict”. Although, there are thinkers that have pointed out that if the principles of physics as we understand them are consistent, then there is really no such thing as randomness. That is, if one could know the initial state of every particle, the results of those particle interactions would be wholly determined and able to be calculated and predicted. This is entirely hypothetical, though, since we can’t at present conceive of that level of particle knowledge. I would argue that knowing the initial state along with how each particle would interact with any other would constitute a form of omniscience. Perhaps technology will advance enough for this to be realistic one day, but for now particle omniscience is pretty much inconceivable. Even so, a better definition for randomness with this in mind is “that with no human discernable pattern”, or “something that is impossible for humans to predict”. I like this definition much more, because it starts to give the implication of a higher consciousness. Perhaps it is possible that for something else, what we see as random is predictable, or even controllable.

If that's the case, we can leverage this to our advantage. An omniscient consciousness by definition knows everything, including the outcome of truly random number generation. Therefore it should be possible to set an intention to receive communication from this higher consciousness and use truly random output as the carrier of the information. This way we can be sure that our own will is completely removed from the result.

Absence of pattern does not equal absence of meaning

Meaning in Randomness

I used to think that random processes basically just meant that the output was meaningless. But in the context of spirituality, this can’t be the case. Likely, it only seems this way because we are often limited, or limiting ourselves, to think using what we can perceive. Empirical based decision making is great for some things…but it's not a universally applicable way to make decisions. I think it’s time we get out of the way, and realize that there is meaning in randomness.