Thomas Campbell
Thomas Campbell is an American physicist and consciousness researcher, best known as the author of the My Big TOE (Theory of Everything) trilogy, which proposes that consciousness is the fundamental substrate of reality and that the physical universe is a virtual reality simulation computed by a larger consciousness system.
Background and early research
Campbell began his scientific career as a graduate student working in experimental nuclear physics, conducting research using a Van de Graaff Generator. During this period, while meditating, he reported being able to perceive errors in his computer punch-card code that were invisible to physical inspection — an experience he described as forcing him to recognize a "consciousness-centered" dimension of reality alongside the material one. After completing graduate school, he took a physics job and his employer introduced him to the work of Robert Monroe, author of Journeys Out of the Body. Campbell and colleague Dennis Mennerich subsequently began collaborating with Monroe at his laboratory, spending fifteen to twenty hours per week conducting experiments in out-of-body states. One representative experiment involved Campbell and Mennerich separately entering isolation booths, going out of body, and recording simultaneous verbal descriptions of what they observed together — descriptions that, when the two audio tapes were played back in sync, matched in detail. Campbell described the work as thirty-five years of investigation that he approached with systematic variation of one variable at a time, consistent with his training as a physicist.
My Big TOE and theoretical framework
The My Big TOE trilogy presents a model in which the singular assumption is that consciousness exists, with all other conclusions — including the structure of quantum mechanics, the constancy of the speed of light, and the nature of paranormal phenomena — derived logically from that premise. The books were first published and subsequently reprinted multiple times with updates; the last major revision was completed in 2015. According to Campbell, each human is an "individual unit of consciousness" — a virtual machine running as a subset of a larger consciousness system — receiving a computed data stream that is experienced as physical reality, in the same way a video game player interprets pixels as a three-dimensional world. Out-of-body states, remote viewing, and other paranormal phenomena are explained as shifts to a different data stream within the same underlying system, accessible through the intuitive rather than the intellectual processing channel of consciousness. The model holds that the purpose of individual consciousness is to lower its entropy by evolving toward what Campbell calls "love" — defined as a cooperative, low-entropy mode of being — and that this evolutionary pressure is the reason for repeated "experience packets" (multiple lifetimes). Campbell also published a paper in a peer-reviewed quantum physics journal proposing double-blind experiments designed to test the virtual-reality hypothesis, co-authored with collaborators from Caltech and JPL.
Campbell has also appeared on the Danny Jones Podcast to discuss the virtual reality hypothesis, its implications for human purpose and consciousness evolution, and the experimental protocols he believes could provide falsifiable evidence for the simulation model.