For centuries, people have divided reality into two worlds: the physical and the spiritual. Bodies and souls, matter and spirit, science and faith. But this split has led to endless confusion and, far too often, conflict. Billions of lives have been shaped, and sometimes destroyed, by doctrines no one can prove.
There is a clearer, more accurate way to see reality. Not as physical and spiritual, but as physical and informational.
The physical is the medium — atoms, energy, and the laws of nature. The informational is the form — differences, patterns, codes, and computations that give rise to thought, life, and culture.
Think about DNA: four chemical letters that store the instructions for life. Or your brain: billions of neurons firing in patterns that create memories, choices, and emotions. Information is what makes these physical processes meaningful. It is not mystical, but it is powerful.
At the center of this lies the self — the “I” each of us feels so deeply. This “I” is not a hidden soul. It is your informational self: the pattern of memory, thought, and sensation your body continuously computes. It feels absolute because it is the interface through which everything else appears.
And your “I” is also ancient. DNA has been carried forward, unbroken, for billions of years. You are both unique — the only perspective that has ever been you — and continuous, the newest link in life’s long informational chain.
This makes life and consciousness marvelous and precious. Not because of spirits, but because they are the most intricate informational structures the universe has yet produced.
Reframing reality as informational/physical does not strip away wonder — it deepens it. It shows why love, meaning, and awe exist, without needing the supernatural. And it points to a path beyond religious division. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews — all have clashed over conflicting stories of spirit. But when we see life through the lens of information and physics, those conflicts dissolve. We share one reality, one chain of life, one human story.
The informational self is not just a philosophy. It is a way to live with clarity, awe, and unity — rooted in what is real.
