The Four States of Emergence

Moksha/liberation as a mode-switch in the Universal Procedure

By Bodhangkur Mahathero

1. The invariant four-state grammar of all emergents

Any emergent that can (a) persist long enough to be identifiable and (b) interact enough to count as “doing something” will exhibit a minimal, repeatable state-space. The druid’s diagram isolates a four-state grammar that appears in machines (PC/automobile) and in spiritual soteriologies (Vedanta/Buddhism) because it is not “religious” or “mechanical” in the first instance. It is procedural.

That grammar is:

1. ON / ACTIVE

2. SLEEP / STANDBY

3. SHUT DOWN

4. RESTART

This is not a list of “possible experiences” but a list of possible operational modes for anything that can run, pause, cease, and re-instantiate. The claim is strong: if a system has identity-as-function (i.e., it is recognisable by what it does), then these four are not optional add-ons. They are the minimal state transitions required for an entity to exist as an entity across time.

To say it sharply: an emergent is a procedure with a power state.

And once power-state enters, these four modes become invariant.

2. ON / ACTIVE: samsara as transactional identity

2.1 What “ON” means procedurally

In a computer, ON is not merely “electricity present.” It is process execution: loops, memory reads/writes, interrupts, IO, error correction, heat, timing. The system is “alive” in the strict sense that it is doing work.

In the druid’s mapping, this is samsara: not “worldly life” as moral failure, but transactional reality—the state in which an emergent actively engages, differentiates, selects, prefers, avoids, gains, loses, and thereby accrues consequences.

Procedurally:

· Identity is enacted.
The system’s “self” is its current running configuration.

· The world is parsed.
Inputs become discriminations: signal vs noise.

· Action produces residue.
Every operation leaves traces: state changes, commitments, unfinished business.

This is the deep reason samsara is experienced as “binding”: not because the world is evil, but because running a process necessarily produces state. State is memory; memory is constraint; constraint is limitation; limitation is identity.

2.2 Karma as write-operations

The druid’s thought experiment gains force when karma is read minimally and non-morally as write-operations—the accumulation of state resulting from action.

· A PC running programs is continually writing to RAM, to disk caches, to logs, to registers.

· A human mind engaged in preference and aversion is continually writing to habit loops, affective priors, social commitments, expectations, fears.

“Karmic residue” is then simply: the persistence of prior writes into current operation.

A clean non-judgemental formulation:

In ON mode, action is not free. Action is a function of state.
And state is the sediment of prior action.

Thus samsara is not “sin.” It is the thermodynamics of identity: once you run, you accumulate.

2.3 Examples: ON as entangling adequacy

· Automobile: engine on, car in gear: movement requires continuous micro-corrections; friction produces heat; wear accumulates; fuel is consumed.

· Biology: metabolism is ON mode; survival is a continuous transaction with scarcity.

· Culture: institutions are ON mode; they persist by reproducing constraints, not by dissolving them.

ON is always productive—and therefore always entangling.

3. SLEEP / ON STANDBY: moksha-1 / nibbāna as suspended transaction

3.1 Standby is not off: it is quiescent power

Standby is a remarkable invention: the system remains powered, but the costly, residue-generating loops are reduced or suspended. Minimal identity is preserved (a kernel, a context), while active engagement is paused.

This maps with striking precision onto the “moksha (1)” / “nibbāna” row: release while embodied, i.e., the system is still “on” (alive) but not “running the world.”

This is why descriptions of liberation-in-life often converge on:

· awareness without object

· consciousness without content

· being without “I-am-doing”

· non-grasping, non-reactivity

· cessation of craving/aversion loops

The mapping becomes technically clean if one makes a single move:

“Content” is not a substance.
Content is transaction.

On Standby is not the acquisition of a new cosmic truth. It is the suspension of transactional parsing.

3.2 Nirodha as throttle and gate

The Yogic term nirodha becomes legible as a control operation:

· It is not “suppression” as moral violence.

· It is the system’s attempt to stop automatic writes.

Nirodha is the strategic inhibition of:

· preferential loops (craving/aversion)

· narrative loops (identity maintenance)

· reactive loops (threat circuitry)

· compulsive meaning-production (conceptual overflow)

In computer terms: the system stops running user-space programs, keeps minimal OS presence. In spiritual terms: “I am” without “I am doing.”

3.3 Why on-standby feels ubiquitous

A further insight states: “consciousness without content, hence ubiquitous” and “being without identity, hence ubiquitous.” This is an important technical claim.

Identity requires boundaries. Boundaries require distinctions. Distinctions require transactions (this vs that). When transaction ceases:

· the boundary is no longer being enacted,

· localisation loses its operational meaning,

· the “here” that depends on “not-there” dissolves.

So the experience becomes “everywhere” not by magical expansion, but because the system has stopped generating the partition that makes “somewhere” possible.

Ubiquity is therefore a void (i.e. negative) phenomenon: the absence of delimitation work.

3.4 Examples: standby across domains

· Computer: sleep mode: the machine retains a session but stops active computation.

· Human: deep meditation: minimal self-process remains, discursive content quiets, reactive loops stop writing.

· Automobile: neutral with engine running: torque not committed into motion; no new trajectory is forced.

Standby is a non-trivial state because it is power without entangling action.

4. SHUT DOWN: moksha-2 / parinibbāna as termination of the running instance

4.1 Shutdown is not “better standby.” It is ontologically different.

Standby preserves the session. Shutdown ends it. The difference is categorical:

· Standby: identity-kernel persists.

· Shutdown: the running instance ceases.

In Buddhism, parinibbāna corresponds to final cessation: not merely the quieting of craving while alive, but the end of the process such that no re-instantiation occurs. Vedanta’s “moksha (2)” in your diagram names the same structural category: the end of the running instance, not just its suspension.

Technically:

· Standby is a reversible state.

· Shutdown is irreversible for that instance.

4.2 Why traditions insist on this distinction

If one confuses moksha-in-life with final liberation, one mistakes a mode-change for a termination. Many traditions therefore develop a two-tier liberation vocabulary because they are tracking a real procedural bifurcation:

· release-as-non-engagement (still powered), i.e. sitting on the fence

· release-as-non-return (no further instantiation), i.e. quitting the game.

The diagram captures that with admirable brutality: sleep vs shut down.

5. RESTART: rebirth as re-instantiation, not moral theatre

5.1 Restart is a structural implication, not a mythic add-on

Once the four-state grammar is accepted, “rebirth” ceases to be a supernatural extravagance and becomes a procedural question:

· If a system shuts down, can it restart?

· If it restarts, what persists across sessions?

· If something persists, by what carrier?

Religions propose answers (subtle body, karmic store, causal continuity, ālaya-vijñāna, etc.). The druid’s thought experiment does something more basic: it shows why the problem arises at all.

Because the grammar makes it inevitable:

If a process can be suspended and terminated, the concept of re-instantiation becomes natural.

5.2 Two models of continuity: “memory carryover” vs “pattern carryover”

Computers allow both:

· Memory carryover: restore from hibernation image, disk state, saved session.

· Pattern carryover: reinstall OS, same architecture, fresh state.

(Some) Spiritual traditions oscillate between analogous models:

· Strong carryover (detailed karmic continuity, residues, impressions, late Buddhism, Vedanta).

· Weak carryover (causal continuity without a persisting self-substance, early Buddhism).

Either way, rebirth is not primarily moral bookkeeping; it is a proposed mechanism to explain why the residue of ON-mode appears to outlive one local session.

In the druid’s register: karmic residue is the persistence of incomplete procedure.

5.3 Example: the “faulty part” metaphor

The earlier car-part example fits perfectly inside this grammar:

· ON: the car runs but under-functions.

· Shutdown: part replaced.

· Restart: new part tested.

· Repetition continues until function is aligned.

This is “rebirth” without mysticism: repeated instantiation until procedural adequacy is achieved—or until the system finds a way to stop the loop by entering standby/termination in a different sense.

6. The historical pivot: from perfecting ON to suspending ON

6.1 Early (optimistic) Vedic route: liberation as successful operation within samsara

Early Vedic (life positive, extravert) religiosity treats samsara as the theatre of optimisation:

· Run the world correctly.

· Align with ṛta.

· Perform yajña.

· Perfect the three varga (dharma/artha/kāma).

· Secure the good life, the orderly life, the effective life (i.e. moksha within life)

In procedural terms:

Liberation is treated as an oucome of perfect execution.

This is the “finish the game (and be released) by mastering the game” paradigm (viz. the early Buddhist arahant).

6.2 The later (pessimistic) realisation: perfect execution does not end execution

The druid’s prompt names the crucial turning point: the recognition of the “sheer impossibility” (with exceptions) of achieving moksha by the samsaric-optimisation route (in crude terms, release as outcome of winning, of being the “fittest”).

This is not pessimism (but leads to it). It is an insight into invariants:

· Running produces residue.

· Residue conditions future running.

· Therefore running tends to self-perpetuate.

So Vedanta and the nāstika systems shift strategy (from extravert positive engagement to introvert escapist disengagement):

· Not “win samsara,” but exit samsara’s write-loop.

· Not “perfect action,” but remove the compulsion to act.

· Not “maximise engagement,” but minimise transaction.

· Quit the game if you can’t win

Hence nirodha becomes central: reducing samsara to standby is reinterpreted as the method.

This is an engineering move:

The route to freedom/moksha is not improved performance.
It is mode-switching to performance avoidance or elimination.

7. What the diagram implies about “the spiritual quest” in general

7.1 Spirituality is often an attempt to control power-state

Under the druid’s lens, “spiritual practice” in late (astika) Vedanta and the major nāstika religions such as Buddhism, Jainism and Samkhya-yoga becomes a family of techniques aimed at:

· throttling engagement,

· reducing residue generation,

· inhibiting compulsive writes,

· shifting the system from ON to STANDBY,

· and, in some doctrines, preventing RESTART/REBIRTH.

This reframes the spiritual quest as procedural governance rather than metaphysical romance.

7.2 Two competing ideals of liberation

The diagram also reveals two ideals that are often conflated:

1. Liberation-as-perfection-of-function (Vedic optimisation)

2. Liberation-as-suspension-of-function (Vedantic/Buddhist nirodha)

These are not just different “beliefs.” They are different answers to a single engineering question:

Is freedom achieved by becoming the perfect process or perfecting function,
or by ceasing to be a process, to function at all?

The first says: become perfectly aligned with ṛta while running.
The second says: stop running, and alignment becomes irrelevant.

The original Vedic, Rishi inspired means to moksha, namely perfection of function, and any function would do, was the mature adult response to samsara. The late Vedanta and nāstika means to moksha namely to disengage from samsara (i.e. to “quit the game”), was the regressive adolescent response.

8. The deepest invariant: identity equals activity

The druid’s thought experiment, if pushed to bedrock, yields a severe conclusion:

· Identity is not a thing you have.

· Identity is a pattern you enact.

· Enactment requires activity.

· Activity generates residue.

· Residue reinforces identity.

Thus samsara is not “illusion.” It is the self-stabilising loop of identity-as-activity.

Moksha-1 then becomes intelligible as:

identity continues minimally, but identity-production ceases.

And moksha-2 as:

the identity-process terminates entirely.

This is why the “ubiquitous being” report is plausible: not because the self becomes cosmic, but because the machinery that localises the self stops doing its localising work.

9. Conclusion: moksha is not a metaphysical prize but a procedural mode-switch

The diagram’s power is that it removes moralism, theology, and romance, leaving a hard invariant:

· ON generates residue.

· Standby suspends residue-generation.

· Shutdown ends the instance.

· Restart re-instantiates unless a condition prevents it.

So “liberation” is not primarily a supernatural deliverance. It is a mode change in the universal grammar of emergent procedures.

In the druid Finn’s procedural compression:

The Veda tried to solve (the dukkha/pain of) samsara by running it perfectly (to sukkah/pleasure).
Vedanta and the nāstika systems tried to solve it by suspending the run.
Final release is not a better move in the game.
It is the absence of moves.

Or in the druid’s technical idiom:

Moksha is the cessation of write-operations.
Nibbāna is the quiescence of transactional parsing.
Parinibbāna is the termination of the running instance.
Rebirth is restart—unless the procedure is finally disarmed.

Adi Shankara’s “Family Business”

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