The ‘Līlā of Māyā’ Revisited

A procedural-physics restatement: the cognisable universe as locally rendered analogue simulations of digital computation, in service of continuance

By Victor Langheld

1. The proposition: the ancient Indian diagnosis was right in kind

The classical Indian intuition—the world is Māyā’s Līlā, the play of appearance—has usually been read as metaphysical poetry: the phenomenal world is “not real,” ultimate reality lies elsewhere, and liberation is escape from illusion.

Finn’s simulation line of thought lets us rescue the structural core of that intuition while stripping away its unnecessary metaphysical inflation.

The core claim, restated with modern discipline, becomes:

What we experience as “the world” is not the unobserved substrate itself; it is a locally generated analogue display produced inside bounded systems from discrete triggers.

If that is true, then “illusion” is not a mistake; it is the method by which any bounded processor lives. In that precise sense, the Indian diagnosis—appearance is constructed—is fundamentally correct.

Where the tradition overreached was in turning the constructive mechanism into a universal substance (e.g., universal consciousness). But the “world-as-appearance” claim survives intact and becomes sharper.

2. Digital in, analogue out: the asymmetry that forces Māyā

Begin where we began:

All boundary-crossing communication is digital (quantised).

Across any interface—cell membrane, retina, skin, microphone, network cable, synapse—what crosses the boundary is not “a continuous world.” It is a token: a quantised event.

· A photon arrives (or doesn’t).

· A molecule binds (or doesn’t).

· A pressure wave produces spikes (or doesn’t).

· A packet is received (or dropped).

· A bit flips (or not).

These are discrete occurrences.

Yet the lived world is not discrete in that way. It is:

· spatially continuous (surfaces, distances),

· temporally coherent (flow, persistence),

· richly textured (colour, warmth, meaning),

· causally narrativised (because, therefore),

· socially saturated (status, shame, pride),

· and self-centred (“I am here”).

So we face a strict asymmetry:

· Input: discontinuous token events.

· Experience: continuous analogue scenes.

If we are honest, only one inference fits:

The continuous world we inhabit is not delivered. It is rendered.

This is Māyā in engineering form: the function that manufactures a usable world from non-world-like inputs.

3. Define rendering properly: rendering is the observation

Finn forces a crucial precision: a photon is not “converted into” a scene, as if a little red leaf were hidden inside the photon waiting to be released.

Correct. The photon is a trigger. The observation is the rendered outcome.

So:

Rendering is the event of observation itself—the analogue appearance that arises when a confined procedure processes a discrete boundary-trigger into a stable, action-guiding world-element.

A photon’s “impact” is not yet “seeing.” It is a boundary perturbation. The seeing is the locally stabilised analogue product of a procedural cascade.

A crisp example:

One photon → “a red leaf” (schematic)

1. Boundary trigger: photon absorbed by photopigment → molecular state change.

2. Digitisation: receptor output becomes spike patterns (quantised neural events).

3. Constraint processing: layered filtering, edge extraction, colour-opponency, motion estimation.

4. Integration: binding across neighbouring events, time-windows, modalities, memory priors.

5. Stabilisation: a coherent, continuous “leaf-in-light” appears long enough to guide action.

The rendering is step (5)—the analogue appearance—produced by the whole cascade. That appearance is not identical with the unobserved trigger.

Thus you obtain a physical-philosophical pivot:

The rendered (analogue) is not the pre-rendered (digital).
Observation is not revelation; it is procedural transformation.

This is the cleanest non-mystical meaning of “illusion”: not falsehood, but constructed appearance.

4. Simulation = analogue representation: why “illusion” is technically accurate

To avoid vagueness, Finn inserted the decisive equivalence:

Simulation = analogue representation.

A simulation is what a confined system produces when discrete triggers are transformed into continuous, usable internal display-structures.

This immediately implies:

· Sights are analogue representations.

· Sounds are analogue representations.

· Objects are analogue representations.

· Names and meanings are analogue representations.

· The felt “now” is an analogue representation.

· The “self” is an analogue representation.

None of these are imported as ready-made objects. They are locally produced displays constrained by digital inputs and internal rules.

So when India said “the world is Māyā,” it was—structurally—saying:

The world you live in is the system’s display (i.e. self-screening), not the substrate in itself.

That is exactly the conclusion forced by token-based boundary exchange.

5. Procedure Monism: confinement as the universal generator of displays

Now fold in Finn’s Procedure Monism’s ontological move.

Procedure Monism claims that identifiable realities are not substances but procedural confinements: bounded sets of constraints generating stable recurrences (“logic-sets”). Finn’s shorthand is a universalised Turing Machine: a limited rule-set that produces localised, persistent patterns.

In this frame, a human is not a “thing” that happens to have consciousness; a human is:

· an astronomically complex confinement region,

· sustaining identity through bounded interactions,

· generating internal analogue displays (world + self) to coordinate continuance.

So consciousness becomes a natural consequence of confinement at sufficient organisational depth:

Where confinement generates integrated modelling, analogue display appears.

The “world” is what it looks like inside a highly integrated confinement system running on discrete triggers.

6. The special simulation: self-consciousness as a rendered persistence-variable

Finn’s central target was not generic perception but the human “I.”

Finn proposed that humans generated the simulation of self-consciousness—
“am,” “I am,” “I am this (in n variations)”—
as a survival interface under constant extinction pressure.

Within our rendering framework, this becomes technically precise:

· The system must integrate action over time.

· It must coordinate competing sub-systems (drives, fears, habits, social cues).

· It must bind memory and prediction.

· It must decide what matters to this system.

That requires an internal control object: a stable, self-referential variable that anchors policies and assigns ownership of states.

So “I” is not a metaphysical owner of experience. It is a rendered model-component: the persistence-tracking and policy-binding construct.

In short:

The self is not the viewer of the simulation.
The self is a feature rendered within it.

This is why the “I am this” family proliferates: the self-model attaches to whatever improves coordination under constraint—body, name, role, tribe, story, wound, mission.

7. The Indian overreach: confusing a rendering mode with ultimate ontology

At this point, the ancient move is understandable:

If the whole world is appearance, then perhaps the “witness” of appearance is universal.

But Finn’s framework permits a more economical explanation of the same phenomenology:

· When segmentation relaxes (silence, absorption, de-narration), the display feels boundless.

· When the self-model thins, experience feels universal.

· When prediction error dampens, reality feels “absolute.”

These are rendering regime shifts within a confinement system—not proofs of an ontological universal consciousness.

So the Indian tradition was correct about Māyā (constructed display), and brilliant about its introspective phenomenology, but often unnecessary in its ontological promotion.

Finn’s thesis keeps the first and explains the second without adding a cosmic substance.

8. From simulation to computation: why analogue displays are compiled outputs

Now we push the boundary exactly as Finn did:

If the analogue world is the rendered outcome of discrete triggers, then what the system is doing is not passive reception—it is active computation.

The photon is not “seen.”
The photon is processed.

Therefore:

The analogue world is the runtime output of digital (ultimately quantum) computations under constraints.

This turns “reality” into something like a compiled interface:

· Digital boundary events provide constraint signals.

· Internal procedures compute a coherent model.

· The model is displayed as analogue experience.

This is why “simulation” is not a metaphor here. It is a structural claim: what you cognise is a computed display.

9. The recursive twist: the observer is also a computation outcome

You Finn made the most radical but also most coherent step:

If every emergent analogue is a rendered computation output, then the observer—as an emergent—must also be a rendered computation output.

So:

Each emergent happens as a digital computation outcome transformed by an observer,
and the observer is itself a digital computation outcome.

This yields a universe of recursive compilation:

· computations producing observers,

· observers rendering computations into analogue worlds.

Nothing “stands outside” the procedure. There is no privileged spectator.

There are only local confinements generating local displays.

This is Māyā no longer as metaphysical accusation, but as engineering description.

10. Scale and plausibility: why a human rendering engine is unimaginably deep

Finn briefly introduced the body’s combinatorial depth to show how far from “simple” observation really is.

Even without sub-atomic detail, a human body is on the order of ~3 × 10²⁷ atoms, organised into ~3 × 10¹³ cells (ballpark). That is not “a mind plus a world.” That is a colossal, nested computation stack—confinements within confinements—out of which a stable analogue theatre is rendered.

So when “a leaf” appears, it is not a direct readout of the leaf-in-itself; it is the end-product of a multi-level computation cascade, stabilised into a usable display.

This is why Finn’s “world as simulation” claim is not airy philosophy. It is what token-based physics and bounded organisation already imply.

11. Procedure Monism’s final integration: continuance as the blind driver

Now add the last PM axiom Finn asked to integrate:

Continuance (blind persistence) is the basic drive.

If that is true, then the whole rendering-computation apparatus is not oriented toward “truth” as a sacred value. It is oriented toward staying in operation.

Under this axiom:

· Each emergent is not a final product but a continuance tactic.

· Each “world” is not a revelation but an action interface.

· Each self-model is not essence but a control convenience.

So each computation stack becomes:

a local experiment, a trial solution—one (expendable) answer among endless (expendable) answers—to the same blind question: how to continue under constraint?

This is where “Līlā” becomes even more literal. The world is not a solemn metaphysical monument. It is procedural play in the strict sense: endless iterative trials.

12. Examples that lock the conclusion into lived reality

A few concrete examples show the framework is not just verbal:

A. Perception

· Digital triggers: photon absorptions, mechanical transductions.

· Analogue display: a continuous, coloured, stable world.

· Function: fast action under uncertainty (avoid predators, find food, navigate).

B. Language and meaning

· Digital triggers: sound packets, glyphs, tokens.

· Analogue display: meanings, intentions, “truth,” “insult,” “promise.”

· Function: social coordination and survival strategy at scale.

C. Dreams

· Minimal external triggers.

· Yet full analogue worlds render anyway.

· This shows the renderer is not “receiving reality,” but generating a world-model whenever it runs.

D. Instruments and science

· Digital events in detectors become graphs, images, “particles,” “fields.”

· Science itself is layered rendering: we render the unobserved into models, then render models into new instruments, then render new outputs again.

E. Self-consciousness under threat

· Under danger, “I am” intensifies.

· The self-model becomes more rigid, more central, more urgent.

· This supports your claim that self-consciousness is a survival interface: a persistence-variable turned up by extinction-pressure.

13. Final conclusion: Māyā’s Līlā as procedural reality

We can now state the whole arc, from the Līlā of Māyā proposition to the end, without mysticism and without dilution:

1. Boundary-crossing communication is quantised: digital triggers, tokens, events.

2. The continuous world we experience cannot be imported; it must be locally generated.

3. Rendering is the act of observation: the production of an analogue event from digital triggers by confined procedures.

4. Therefore the cognisable world is a simulation—an analogue representation—constrained but not identical with the unobserved substrate.

5. Each emergent is a locally rendered computation outcome stack.

6. The observer is also an emergent—therefore also a computation outcome stack.

7. Hence the cognisable universe is recursion: computations rendering computations into analogue displays.

8. Under Procedure Monism, continuance is the blind driver; therefore each emergent is a trial solution in an endless series of procedural experiments whose only intrinsic aim is: keep going.

So the ancient Indians were fundamentally correct about the world being Māyā’s Līlā—not because the world is “mere fantasy,” but because the world we live in is, rigorously, an appearance-play: local analogue displays generated by confined procedures from digital triggers, in service of continuance.

Or in one blunt (i.e. cynic) Finn-line:

Reality is not what is. Reality is what keeps being rendered.

The ‘Lila of Maya,’ why the ancient Indian got it right

Consciousness as simulation

The Birth of Illusion

The druid said: “Life’s a game to be played for real”

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